


Never Too Late

by flickerthenflare



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coming Out, F/M, Friendship, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-08-19 03:19:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8187572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerthenflare/pseuds/flickerthenflare
Summary: Mercedes and Tina are shocked when both of their husbands of 20+ years ask for a divorce so they can marry each other. Kurt and Blaine realize they don’t want to waste any more time apart. With humor and occasionally with grace, the four of them take this opportunity to reassess what they want from life and how to go after it. 
Inspired by the basic premise of Grace and Frankie but with a very Glee twist.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for past infidelity and homophobia. 
> 
> I owe a HUGE thank you to Nikki for all her hard work and gentle coaxing that brought this story into existence. Thank you to Alianne for the initial prompt!

_June 26, 2015_

It’s a Friday morning when the announcement comes. The sun is up in Lima, Ohio, and spilling across Blaine’s desk. Blaine is supposed to be on his way to work – those exercise junkies aren’t going to lead themselves through routines, and payroll for the studio needs to be run, supplies restocked – but he checks the news right before he goes.

He’ll be late if he doesn’t leave soon. The problem is, he can’t seem to stop crying.

“What is it, Blainey-days?” Tina reaches out to him as soon as she catches on to the sniffles he tries to keep quiet. Most mornings, one month shy of 20 years into a marriage, they chatter companionably while getting themselves ready to run their business together. Blaine hasn’t said anything for too long.

Blaine gestures toward the computer screen with the news article still open. _Supreme Court Ruling Makes Marriage Equality the Law of the Land._ He knew it was possible. He had hoped for this outcome. His home state of Ohio has stubbornly resisted every step of the way, but now this particular fight is over across the country.

Blaine swipes at his eyes one more time. Looks like he’s never going to age out of crying easily. As much as he knew it was possible, it also felt like he would never see this day. He didn’t expect to feel as overwhelmed as he does now. Like the world he knows has fundamentally changed. Maybe even like it’s passing him by.

“That’s amazing!” Tina cheers. She brushes away his tears with well-practiced skill and tuts at him with affection. “Aww, sweetheart. I love that you care. Next time, warn me that they’re happy tears. You scared me.”

A thousand other mornings, Blaine has had an opportunity and backed down. A thousand other mornings, Blaine has let it go. Has told himself not to ruin everything he already has.

“I want that.” The words spill out after a split-second decision, garbled by the tears. Maybe it’s not a rational decision, but the words keep coming, and he doesn’t want them to stop. They’ve been held in too long already. “I want the wedding, and the not hiding anymore, and, and…everything. A future. I want…” it’s still so hard to articulate. There are words he’s never said. Not to anyone listening, anyway.

Tina regards him with cautious confusion. “What? What are you saying?”

His voices clear enough to say with certainty, “I want to be married to a man.”

Tina stills. Blaine sees the calm before the storm that’s coming. She poises for the next blow. “One in particular?”

Blaine nods. He wills himself to do this with clear eyes. The even bigger secret is still to come. “His name is Kurt.”

***

Kurt covers his mouth with both hands. A panicked half-noise struggles to make its way out, and it’s best left in. Thankfully, he has no air for it. He’s completely breathless at the sight of Blaine down on one knee before him but without a ring to offer, awash in tacky fast-casual restaurant florescent lighting and still so charming.

“But you’re married. _I’m_ married.” These are not new facts. Decisions they made when they were so, so young have become mistakes now over 20 years in the making. By comparison, his thing with Blaine is so new. His _illicit trysts_ with Blaine, born from a middle-aged desire to find himself and how adorable Blaine looks in that fitness class Kurt signed up for when his daughter went away to that fancy boarding school. Not that a lunch date at Quiznos is particularly illicit or befitting a tryst.

His thing with Blaine is so new, but it also feels so right.

Blaine folds his hands over the knee not bent to the ground but otherwise stays put, adorable triangular eyebrows still raised in question. He knows it’s not a no yet.

This is not the lunch break Kurt expected. He thought they’d just make eyes at each other over toasted sandwiches and oven-warmed cookies. It’s not what the crowd at Quiznos expects either. Kurt and Blaine get their share of strange looks. Full mouths are agape. For decades, Kurt has tried to not draw attention. They’ve both worked so hard, and Blaine is blowing it on a romantic gesture that he can’t have planned, at an inappropriate time and place. He can’t be thinking this through.

“We’re too old to change everything. We have our lives, with our kids, and our mortgages, and jointly filed taxes, and...” Kurt finds himself speaking too fast as he considers the enormity of everything Blaine is asking for. Their lives will be upended.

“I want to grow old with you. I want to spend every day with you. I want to have something we never thought was _possible_. We could wait for our parents to pass on, and our kids to grow up, and everyone else in our lives to disappear so there’s no one left to say ‘no’, but that’s such a long, morbid time to wait. When my parents got married, it wasn’t even legal everywhere, and they went to another state rather than wait for things to change. I was never brave enough to do the same to marry you, and now we don’t _have_ to, and I’m not waiting any longer. I know everything’s going to be a mess at first. I know it’s going to be hard. I have to believe it will all be worth it.” Blaine keeps grinning that wild grin through his earnest rambles. He reaches behind him to the tray still holding his lunch and breaks off a piece of his cookie. “Kurt Hummel, will you take this bite of oven-warmed cookie I said I wasn’t going to share with you as a token of my affection, and a promise to share everything else?”

“I…” Kurt is either going to swoon or faint.

The busgirl clearing the table next to them looks from Blaine to Kurt, nonplussed. “Honey, say yes already. You’re not getting any younger.”

***

Mercedes Jones, two-time Grammy-award winner and pop icon extraordinaire, has a concert that night. She has hair and makeup to sit through, a series of costume changes to prep for, and social media to update, all while on vocal rest. She’s working through her concert checklist when she hears the marriage equality ruling. Instantly she knows a way to do something to commemorate it has to go on her checklist as well. She has tons of gay fans she wants to support, and backup singers and dancers like Brittany who are part of her team and have been for years. She has faced plenty of criticism for being a well-known Christian woman who is also so outspokenly gay-friendly, but she’s not about to let naysayers hold her back from speaking her mind. She’s happy for her friends and fans, and she’s going to help them celebrate. Between everything else happening, she writes up a script.

That night, Mercedes uncoils the microphone cord from the stand and walks away closer to the edge of the stage.

“Before we get started, I’ve got a few acknowledgments to make. Today was a big day.” Cheers temporarily overwhelm the stadium. She patiently waits to continue. “It’s been a good day for love. The rights gained today matter a lot to people I love. And to everyone who got a step closer to feeling loved today, this one is for you.”

The crowd joins in on the upbeat song of hope Mercedes chose to use for the dedication. She doesn’t usually do covers now that she has several albums of her own, but “Dog Days Are Over” just seems right.

When the concert is over, Mercedes checks in with her daughter briefly before going back on vocal rest for the night, and because she’s smart enough to know a teenager won’t be asleep yet. She meant to call her husband before it got too late, but he’s more understanding that she doesn’t always have time. They miss each other more often than not.

Surprisingly, he calls her.

“I saw you on YouTube,” Kurt says with a smile in his voice she hasn’t heard in a while. It sounds good that way. She misses hearing it.

“I swear, everything I do ends up on YouTube,” Mercedes laughs. Still, she can imagine what video will be the most popular from tonight’s show.

The smile disappears. “Um. Can we talk when you get home?”

***

Tina moves through her day numbly. She had her meltdown at Blaine immediately following his confession, and now she’s worn out and hazy from replaying that conversation over and over in her mind. Yes, he cheated on her. Yes, with a man named Kurt, who she doesn’t know yet but Blaine would like her to meet. (What. The. Fuck.) Yes, he’s gay, and he’s been certain for a while. And yes, that means he wants a divorce.

She woke up without a single expectation of hearing her husband of 20 years and three goddamn pregnancies is ready to move on. And not just move on in a vague, inexact sense where he quickly realizes he doesn’t mean it and is just acting out of boredom, but move on as in exercising his brand new right to marry whoever he’s been cheating with long enough to think that’s an option that makes sense way. Not that Blaine always makes sense, but how much comfort can she take in that?

Tina comes home knowing her whole world has changed, but the house is the same as she walks up their steps. Blaine waits for her on the swing on their front porch. The one they’re supposed to grow old on. Older.

“Blaine Cohen-Chang, did you buy me ‘sorry I’m gay’ flowers?”

“Maybe?” He keeps holding them out to her. His eyes beg her to still like him.

She takes them and wonders idly if he’ll change his name back to Anderson. They had laughed at how daring and non-conventional they were at the time, swearing it would be the same for their marriage. How true that’s turning out to be. “Do they come with ‘and sorry I cheated’ chocolates?”

“I’ll make you cookies. You can even pick what kind.” He looks hopefully up at her.

Flowers and cookies hardly make up for the end of her marriage, but there’s time to fight later, when everything doesn’t feel fragile between them. There’s a lot of hurt for her to process – a lot of feelings she doesn’t want to begin to touch. But being together is a start.

They settle in, side by side, like any other quiet Friday night now that their children are old enough to have their own plans. Blaine makes the cookies – double chocolate with M&Ms too because Tina is not fucking around with her stress relief - and Tina samples the dough. He offers her the beater to lick with a flourish. If their kids were around, they’d groan at them for being too cutesy.

“How are we going to be now?” Tina asks. They have friends who have divorced messily, and others who have drifted apart. Tina never thought that would be them. They were the couple who believed in indulging each other more than fighting. The ones who weren’t supposed to have any secrets from each other. They were going to be so much better than their own parents.

“I want us to be best friends.”

Tina accepts the beater with a kiss to Blaine’s cheek and wonders if that means affection between them is supposed to go away. “Isn’t that what we’ve actually been?”

“Tina – yes, _of course_. We are. I don’t want to lose that.” He sounds close to tears again. “I really believed – Tay-Tay, you’re beautiful. I hope you still believe me when I say that. I love who you are, and our relationship, and who we’ve become together. When you asked me to marry you, I thought you were all I could want. It was a different world when we got married. I thought being your best friend was enough. I thought we would both be happy enough. But being with you is not who I am. I’m sorry it took me a while to realize that, and even longer to let you know. I don’t want to ruin the best part of us together, for us to _not_ be friends anymore.”

Tina thinks back to the world when they got married. Back before Ellen came out on national TV. When they grew up hearing about AIDS as gay cancer. When gay panic was used as an excuse for murder. When neither of them knew anyone who was gay. She’s so glad that’s not the world anymore. It doesn’t soothe her broken heart, but it does soothe some of her anger, at least toward him. She’ll rage another day about how unfair it all still is, when it isn’t likely to break them both.

“Do I get a friendship bracelet out of it?” Tina teases. It gets less funny when she imagines trading in her wedding ring for braided twine that falls apart and gets lost at the end of each summer. Friendship mementos aren’t built to last the same way.

“We can do that next,” Blaine says; always game, no matter how silly the suggestion. With three kids, their cupboard for craft supplies is overflowing.

“Not tonight.” It’s too soon to accept the unfair exchange. It’s too soon for anything that involves facing how she feels. “How about you just hold my hair back when I get sick from all this sugar?”

“Whatever you need,” Blaine promises.

He sounds too sincere, and Tina resolves not to get caught up in any legitimate feelings she isn’t ready to work through tonight. She flicks flour in his hair to make them stop. It earns her the look of feigned indignation she knows so well.

“Ha. It’s doing that just fine on its own, thanks.” Blaine brushes the flour away.

Tina reaches for the cocoa powder next. “Here, let me fix it.”

Blaine bolts. Tina gives chase. They both shriek enough to distract themselves from the mess they’ll soon have to clean up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If marriage equality and a bunch of other rights matter to you and you’re in the United States, please register to vote. 
> 
> In more fic-specific news, additional chapters are underway and will be posted as they're completed. Thanks for reading!


	2. Everyone Meets Everyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that there is alcohol consumption in this chapter, but hopefully not in a way that's going to bum anyone out.

Tina and Blaine have a pact: only one of them can freak out at a time. Sometimes, they call dibs on who has to be functional and who has the luxury of falling apart. Usually, they figure out what the other one needs without a word. On their best days, no one freaks out, of course, but they don’t make plans based on everything turning out for the best.

Tina can tell Blaine is nervous about breaking the news to their kids. He’s too quiet while the three of them poke through kitchen cupboards loudly debating what unorthodox things they can throw on the grill. Their yelling about whether they want to use yams or peanut butter cups in s’mores carries to the backyard.

“Your turn?” Tina offers.

“For at least another minute.” Blaine makes eye contact for a brief moment and then he’s back to poking at the fire. It’s mostly out, but it should last long enough for s’mores.

“They’ll be fine. They may groan about your love of disco and how enthusiastic you are about _everything_ and how uncool you are, but you’re also the one they ask to stay home when they’re sick, and who bakes overly-fancy cakes for their birthdays, and reads all of the _Harry Potter_ series aloud to them even though there are audiobooks for that, and who offers them pep talks they didn’t ask for. Do you want one of those?”

“No, I, um…” Blaine drifts off before he finishes his thought and then his attention is wherever his worries have taken him. He’s been doing that all evening.

She gets it, even if she does believe in the long run that it will work out. Their kids love Blaine as much as he absolutely adores them, but love can be a fickle thing. Their mouths have been known to run faster than their brains. Neither nature nor nurture gives Tina and Blaine’s kids a high likelihood of developing filters. 

“You’re going to tell us something, right?” Wesley asks, interrupting both his sisters’ conversation on how long to roast the perfect marshmallow and his parents’ lost thoughts. He’s their eldest, named for a close friend who had been kind to Blaine in high school and who still stays in touch. Wesley will start college next fall and until recently Tina thought that would be the hardest thing she would have to deal with in the coming year.

Blaine responds, “Yes,” although he’s waited all through dinner and prep to take the opportunity.

“When?”

“20 more years, give or take,” Tina cracks. No one laughs. The kids don’t get the joke yet, and it’s not even that funny for her. Laughing inappropriately is better than not at all, though.

The kids wait patiently for their parents to begin – Blaine’s influence – but with looks of fond exasperation that threaten to become less fond if needed – Tina’s. They’re such a fascinating mix of both of them plus the unexpected.

"Are you having another kid?" Winnie asks when her parents take too long to fill the silence.

"You're literally out of ‘W’ names." Wesley says.

"Wally, West, Winter, Wyoming, Washington..." Wendi is the youngest at 11 and she always wants to prove something to the other two.

"That's one comic book character, a season, and two states. The whole cutesy alliteration scheme is bad enough without going there." 

"....Wilma, Winthrop...."

"Please stop."

"Is this a fun family meeting, or is someone in trouble?" Winnie interrupts the other two to ask. She's well versed at charming her way out of trouble. She’s 15 and roasts her marshmallow around the guitar she hugs like it's a body pillow. 

Blaine looks like he’s going to be sick.

In a moment of what’s meant to be mercy, Tina decides to let Blaine continue to be the one freaking out. She’ll compartmentalize and focus on _support Blaine through coming out because you care about him_ separate from _Blaine is a lying cheat_ separate from _my husband is divorcing me whether I want him to or not_. She waits until their mouths are full of marshmallow and chocolate to announce, “Kids, your father is gay.”

She’s rewarded with four muffled “whaaa?”s that mean she has a few seconds more before coherent interruptions. She gets out what she can.

"He isn’t leaving. We're not fighting, at least not more than necessary. We’re not going to expect you to take sides because that’s not how this is going to work. Sure, Everything might change, and we’re not even sure how yet, but…” Tina falters for a moment but she doesn’t have time to waste. “But that can be okay. Okay?" ~~~~

Blaine’s looks mildly ruffled but he’ll have to forgive her. He composes himself soon enough. “That was my news. But yeah. Probably all of that.”

“Wait, probably?” Tina huffs. They opted to forgo polish in exchange for not waiting any longer. The downside is not having a clue what either of them are doing.

Wendi raises her hand. “Can Dad be my gay best friend?”

“It’s not cool if it’s your dad,” Wesley tells her. “Do you really want to take Dad shopping?”

“Uh, yeah, he has a credit card.” Wendi rolls her eyes.

“Dad’s love of Freddie Mercury suddenly makes sense.” Wesley says. He cautiously gauges how both his parents react to his joke.

“Uh, everyone should love Freddie Mercury,” Blaine says with a small laugh that makes him look less like he’s going to be sick into their s’mores.

Winnie doesn’t laugh. “Did Dad cheat?”

Tina levels her with a look. “I want you to think long and hard before you decide you want to hear about your parents’ sex lives,” she says at the same time Blaine says “yes.”

“I, for one, did not want to hear, and yet here we are,” Winnie retorts. “Can someone please explain bisexuality to Dad and save us all a lot of trouble?” To him, she directs, “You don’t need to cause a lot of drama over belatedly realizing dudes are hot too.”

Blaine speaks gently in that overly earnest style of his, familiar now from years of being the parent to tackle the hard conversations. “Honey, I’ve had a lot of time to think about who I am. I know. Your mother didn’t misspeak. I’m absolutely sure.”

Winnie looks down at her strings.

Blaine seems calmer now – Tina’s turn to freak out is coming, and not a moment too soon. She can feel her own calm losing its grip with each moment that make the impending upheaval more real. What does Blaine think is changing? How much of her life is going to get torn apart in the process?

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Wendi asks.

“Is it Mr. Evans?” Wesley looks the most concerned he has since this conversation began. “You’re not allowed to date my glee club teacher. We’ve got enough drama there without you adding to it.”

Winnie looks even more distraught than she already did. “Lord. Don’t even – no.”

“His name is Kurt. He’s a mechanic. He –”

“What, did you go to him for an oil change? Dad, that sounds like the plot of a porno.” Wesley’s nose wrinkles. “And not even a classy one.”

“Don’t say ‘porno’ in front of the accident,” Winnie chides without looking up from the guitar she hugs.

“I don’t care if you say ‘porno,’ but don’t be rude,” Tina says at the same time Blaine says, “You were all accidents and we were fine with that,” channeling each other’s pet peeves of kindness and honesty. Tina smiles. They still have each other’s back.

She’s happy for a moment at the temporary united front, and then the harder questions come, like “are you getting divorced?” and “who gets to keep the house?” and “are we all still living together?” and “do you have to do this my senior year?” Tina’s cool, calm, accepting exterior lasts in front of Blaine and their kids through Blaine’s vague assurances that they’ll figure it out and it’ll be okay. As soon as they’re not underfoot, however, Tina is at a loss. She slumps into the comforter Blaine picked out for their bed that might soon leave her with him. Their children expect them to have some idea of what their lives are going to be like from this point forward. Tina doesn’t want to answer – or even contemplate – a single one of those questions.

Tina listens to the alternating sounds of Blaine’s electric toothbrush and the faucet running in their en suite. If she’s going to break down, she has only a couple minutes more. But once she starts, she’s not going to stop. She can’t schedule a breakdown in such a short window of availability.

She doesn’t mean for her sigh to be audible.

“Sorry I took a while. Are you ready for your turn?” Blaine calls from just out of sight. Soon he’ll appear in his monogrammed pajama set that’s slightly too long, ready to share the bed even though their marriage is over, because no one has acknowledged it’s time to figure out what moving on should look like for them.

“I can’t do this right now.” She’s not sure he hears. It’s not meant for him anyway.

She doesn’t give him time to answer. She just leaves. She’s not keeping calm and putting her feelings on hold for a second longer. She needs a wide berth before she explodes.

Tina ends up at her car, keys in hand. She drives without direction. Her only goal is to get far enough away that it doesn’t matter whether it’s her turn yet to freak out or not. If she gets far enough away, taking turns can meet the same dismal end as her marriage. She can be as selfish with her freak outs as she damn well pleases.

It’s dark outside, and it’s easy enough to forget where she is altogether. Lima disappears.

The questions she doesn’t want to think about are still too loud. She calls Kitty, who is too tough for Tina to be tempted to get weepy. Calling Kitty won’t be an invitation to cry her heart out, but to rage. Tina starts before Kitty has a chance to say hello. ~~~~

“I said he’s not going to leave but I don’t actually know literally anything. Maybe I just lied to our children for him, who knows, _not me_. Maybe I’m going to be left behind while he starts a brand new life that’s so much better than the one _I_ liked. Maybe things are going to get better for him and just suck for me because everything I thought was good is over. I can’t even say it _was_ good anymore. I _thought_ it was good. I used up the best year of my life on something I can’t even call good! What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Do you want an opinion?” Kitty asks.

“No I _don’t_!” All her friends tell her what they think they would do, how they would handle it _soooo_ much better. At this rate, she won’t have a husband _or_ friends.

“How is Kurt’s wife handling everything?” Kitty asks.

“She’s famous – she can pay people to feel things for her. Her concierge service probably covers husband replacement, with a free upgrade to a younger, more heterosexual model.”

“That’s…probably not true.” Kitty takes a moment to consider it. “Maybe the Amex Black Card.”

“I wonder if she has a whole team of people dedicated to fixing this for her. If I were famous, I think I’d have a disaster-check team on hand to handle anything remotely unpleasant… What do you think the professional team recommends?” Is Tina’s life too disastrous to even contemplate? But their situations are similar; if there’s an answer for Mercedes and Kurt, there’s an answer for Tina and Blaine.

“Do you want my opinion on that?” Kitty asks wryly.

For the first time since Blaine came out, Tina knows what she wants to do. “Maybe I can use this to meet a music icon! It’s a waste of a sham marriage not to try, right? I have this opportunity right in from of me!”

It’s the first fun thought she’s had, and it may be pure fantasy, but she’s going to go after it anyway.

***

Mercedes’ next album is going to be a trainwreck if she keeps this up.

Everything she does will be seen as a statement, which means she questions every line she tries to write. An uptempo song means she’s glad to be rid of her husband. A love song means she’s hung up on him. A breakup song is too obvious. Every emotion is spoken for, except for her usual sense of _fun_. Maybe she should just do an album of Adele, Ella Fitzgerald, and Joni Mitchell covers and be done with it. That’s not her, though. Mercedes’ music doesn’t wallow. It doesn’t feel sorry for itself. It doesn’t fixate over how this isn’t the life she meant to end up living.

Her music is stuck until she’s ready to move on.

In the spirit of moving on, she goes in search of Kurt. Since she came back from tour, Kurt seems to always end up on the opposite end of the house as her. Their house is admittedly large enough to make that easy. For all she knows, he isn’t even home. He certainly doesn’t make it easy to know.

“Kurt?” She calls. She doesn’t hear a response, even when she calls again, so for her own amusement she calls “olly olly oxen free!” next. _All clear to come out._ She could almost laugh, although little seems funny lately.

The doorbell rings. Mercedes is closer than Kurt, wherever he is, so she answers it without thinking who will be on the other side.

She doesn’t know the man waiting outside, but she senses before he says his name that Blaine Cohen-Chang stands on her doorstep, smile wide but a little hesitant. He looks like he’s about to sell her on a new religion, but he has a bottle of wine tucked under his arm instead. He’s cute, which is validating, but also doesn’t make her feel any better about being cheated on. He sounds decades younger than he is when he says, “Hi, Ms. Jones, I’m here to see Kurt?”

She doesn’t know what to say. What is there to say to half the reason why her marriage is in shambles?

“Did Kurt tell you he asked me to stop by? I’m Blaine. I brought a bottle of wine for you, by the way. It’s one of my favorites when I want to drink something classier than a Mike’s Hard Lemonade.”

Mercedes doesn’t know much about him, but she knows Blaine also has a wife. She has dozens of questions about the nerve he must have showing up at her door acting like she can be charmed after sleeping with her husband behind her back. But she was raised better than to be unkind to strangers, and all small talk leaves her mind, which is the only explanation for how “Are you the Cohen half or the Chang half?” slips past her filter.

“The half-half.” Blaine chuckles at his joke (Mercedes doesn’t) and then explains, “I took my wife’s last name. She’s adopted from Korea, and I’m hapa, so when we talked about it, and how much we bonded over feeling both Asian and white and tangentially Jewish but not satisfactorily enough of any of those things to make sense to most other people, it just made sense to us. Plus, Blaine Cohen-Chang is _really_ fun to say and my parents shit a brick.”

“How are they doing now?” It just slips out. The hurt shows plainly on his face. It doesn’t make her feel better. Mercedes sighs. “Come in.”

“Thank you.” Blaine steps past her and into the house like he knows exactly where he’s going. He presumptively leads the way. “I love what you’ve done with the hall lighting.”

“Do you really want to talk about how many times you’ve been in my house to notice the hall lighting?” How well does Blaine know her home already? Which of the rooms has he been in? How well should she Lysol?

Blaine’s lips form a perfect ‘o’. “No. Nope.”

Kurt didn’t even care enough to warn her. As far as she knows, he isn’t even _home_. He hasn’t cared to make his presence known. And yet Blaine leads on while Mercedes mentally debates either powerful disinfectants or selling everything she owns and starting over.

“Are you enjoying being back from tour?” Blaine asks, filling the awkward silence with awkward small talk.

Mercedes thinks of Kurt waiting up for her arrival like he hasn’t done in years only to turn her world upside down. Her bag barely touched the ground. “Yeah. It’s been a hoot. You?”

“My work just stays in one place.” Blaine laughs like they’re friends, or he would very much like them to be. “I mean, not literally, but it’s a gym, so there’s a lot of moving in place. I lead kickboxing and jazzercise classes for all ages when I’m not busy making sure the whole place keeps running.”

Mercedes could correct him to say that her question was really about how he enjoyed _her_ time away, but that first barb about his parents didn’t make her feel better. She also resists asking if meeting at a gym as student and instructor sounds like a porno. Mercedes’ self-restraint is getting a tougher workout than any class Blaine could teach.

They find Kurt – Blaine leads her right to him, which tells Mercedes that Kurt bothered to let _one of them_ know where to find him. A suitcase sprawls in front of him, like he’s just leaving on a trip. He organizes his socks with precision.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Kurt.”

He looks blinkingly up at her with an expression that says he’s listening. He’s been doing that a lot lately – cautiously saying nothing and waiting for her to talk. It’s a lot like talking to a wall. Occasionally he also gives judgmental looks. It’s not an improvement on the wall.

Kurt’s gaze softens when it lands on Blaine and wow, that hurts.

"We should talk to professionals first," Mercedes says.

"Like therapy?"

"Like crisis management." Therapy isn't the worst idea either. He’s balked every time she’s suggested it though, and she finally sees that they can’t be fixed as a couple. The only comfort therapy can offer them now is becoming fixed as people, and even that’s not her top priority. “We need a statement. We have to decide what we’re going to say. I don’t know what that is yet. I don’t think you do either. And if neither of us knows, we need someone to help us out.”

Letting Kurt move out makes it official. Everyone else will see that their marriage is in shambles. Mercedes may have plenty of experience in the spotlight, but her private life has mostly stayed private because it’s never been deemed interesting enough before. The last time Mercedes and Kurt were featured in the press – a _People_ magazine listicle of celebrities in long-term relationships with completely normal, everyday people – even she was bored by it. Who knows what it takes for a story to go viral, but a religious woman’s marriage ending in a gay sex scandal sounds like the makings of a pretty good one to Mercedes. Being found out instead of announcing it on their own terms will make the scandal last even longer. She’s exhausted just thinking about it. Her career has always been about her music. She doesn’t need the distraction from what she wants her work to say.

“You can say what you’d like,” Kurt says.

The coolness sets her on edge. It’s like he doesn’t even care. Behind her, Blaine shifts awkwardly.

“What did I do to you?” Mercedes asks, giving him a stern look that works wonders on their daughter and less spectacularly on him. “I know why I’m mad at you. You cheated on me. You _lied_ to me. You’re making me go through this divorce when I told you upfront that I never wanted that to ever be an option for us. I didn’t want this.”

“Well, maybe you can get an annulment on account of my excessive gayness.”

Mercedes’ patience with him goes. She’ll look like a hypocrite for all she said and believed about making marriage last for 20 years: marriage is work, there’s nothing they can’t overcome if they work at it together, divorce isn’t an option. Divorce wasn’t supposed to be an option. “What did I do besides marry you like you asked me to?”

Kurt’s glance slides back to the suitcase, still infuriatingly calm. “You publicist will come up with what’s best for you. I’m going to get out of the way.”

They used to be best friends. Kurt was her sounding board, her confidant, her cheerleading team. She never deluded herself into thinking they had a great, passionate romance, but she didn’t want the drama all her friends seemed to thrive on anyway (although she loved the gossip). She didn’t want the uncertainty. She wanted someone kind, who enjoyed her company. They were comfortable. She thought what they had worked for them.

They used to be best friends, but maybe they’re both too proud for that to still be true. The doorbell rings again. She isn’t expecting anyone, but it’s a good excuse to leave.

Mercedes opens the door again, this time to a woman around her own age carrying a covered dish.

“Wow, you answer your own door! I expected to be thrown out before getting this far. I also thought I’d beat Blaine here and convince him we should do this together despite his insistence that us meeting is a _terrible_ idea, maybe have some kind of introduction, but this is hardly the first time I thought we’d be together and he went off and did his own thing, huh? And by that I mean your husband.”

Mercedes takes a step back. “Maybe I should get security.”

“We could be friends!” The woman thrusts the pan into Mercedes’ arms. “I know that’s a common thought women have about celebrities they idolize, but I don’t even mean it in the desperate for attention and validation way. We have something really specific in common, which is our gay husbands boning each other. How many people can say they know exactly what you’re feeling? I’ve had all the feelings and it’s not like they’re stopping anytime soon.”

That sounds familiar enough to Mercedes to keep her from closing the door.

“No one else is giving me the reaction that I want,” she continues. “Everyone wants to hate him on my behalf or be his new best friend. _I’m_ his best friend. And I don’t want to hate him. Or, if I do, I should be the only one allowed to. You know? I’m mourning what I thought we had. I’m mad at him for moving on before I even knew we were over. I’m a mess, basically.”

Mercedes’ gaze slides down to the pan she now holds.

“My book club loves those truffles,” The woman explains. “They’re full of bourbon.”

“Are we expecting a whole book club?” It’s not a small pan.

“They’re like the antidote to feeling bitter. I think we can find a use for them.”

“What’s your name?” Mercedes asks. In all her demands for Kurt to explain himself, she never thought to get Blaine’s wife’s name.

“Tina Cohen-Chang.”

Mercedes smiles for what feels like the first time in forever. “Tina, I think we can.”

***

Blaine’s poor people-pleasing heart probably can’t stand this. He looks after Mercedes like he has half a mind to run after her. Kurt adds it to the long list of things to feel guilty about. The long, long list.

Blaine recovers quickly from a guilty expression of his own and looks at Kurt again with so much affection. “I hope you don’t just love me for the thrill of sneaking around.”

“I meant to tell her I asked you to come before you actually came.” Kurt meant to do a lot of things sooner. Something about packing up all his worldly possessions without a direction to go in made him lose track of time.

Kurt takes Blaine’s hostess gift – a bottle of wine with a label Kurt doesn’t bother to read – and pops it open. The wine sloshes over the top and dribbles onto Kurt’s fingers. He swears and switches hands.

Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and raises it to his lips. He catches the wine in a kiss. “Do you have glasses for this?”

Kurt responds by taking a swig directly from the bottle. It’s bitter. He doesn’t particularly care for it. Kurt Hummel does not need to add clichés on top of clichés, and that’s all the wine can give him. It just seemed like a good idea for a moment. He’s grasping at what he can.

“Whoa, hey, are you okay?” Blaine deftly removes the bottle from Kurt’s grasp with the experience of a man who had three toddlers in quick succession. He holds it at length.

“I’m ready to start my life with you. I don’t like myself in this one. I literally ruin people’s lives.” He and Mercedes used to be best friends. For the longest time, Mercedes’ friendship was the only good thing going on in his life.

Blaine’s lips part. No doubt platitudes will come next. Kurt kisses him before they can. Kurt can taste the wine on his lips again. Forget alcohol and every other vice when he has Blaine as an option. He’ll drown his sorrows in Blaine’s affection and walk away in a stupor. By now, Kurt has familiarized himself with Blaine’s embrace. Kurt hasn’t felt like he belongs most places, but Blaine’s arms are meant for him. He kisses Blaine like he’s been waiting his whole life for it.

Blaine looks like his own senses have been addled when he pulls away.

“No, hey,” Kurt protests. “Stop taking away things I want.”

“This isn’t how I help you pack.” Blaine’s hands rest of Kurt’s shoulder, gently holding him back.

Kurt outright whines in response. This is what being a teenager should have felt like. Bold, reckless, hopelessly in love. How can he be expected to behave? And shouldn’t the urgency abate now that he has Blaine promising forever, starting as soon as possible? They’re too old for puppy love. Still, that’s what it feels like. Like being in love for the first time – dazed by the feeling as much as the other person. He didn’t know he was capable of feeling like this.

Blaine humors him with another kiss, but not for as long as he would like. “How do you want it to be? You know, this brand new life. Tell me about it. Am I in it?” Blaine’s nose scrunches as he fishes for compliments.

Kurt closes his eyes. He’s thought about this more times than he can count. “Do your kids do the thing where they say they were born in the wrong generation?”

“We talk a lot about time travel to do things like give Bryan Ferry a high five in 1975 – they’ve got a running list on the fridge – but no, not really.”

“Mine neither, but she has friends who do.” Kurt’s daughter is black and has sense – two strikes against idolizing the recent past. “They always go in the wrong direction. I can have a milkshake any day, but what wouldn’t I give to be young now and forget the decades we went through. I’d have you and not a single guilty feeling about finally falling in love. If a brand new life were actually an option, that’s what I want.”

Blaine takes Kurt’s hand. His thumb rubs circles in nonsensical, reassuring patterns. Each touch from Blaine is a soft encouragement to keep going, but Kurt falls silent.

Maybe Blaine’s kids have it right with the whole time travel thing. Kurt wants to move forward, but he also has so many regrets. There’s not a reality-based way to go back and fix things, to change the choice he made. From the minute he said “I do” to promises he couldn’t keep, it was too late to get out without causing harm. And staying kept making it harder to leave. Now there’s no graceful way out, and staying isn’t an option either. He has his own happiness to consider, and the hope that however miserable he makes her, Mercedes will be happier when she moves on from him too.

“Kurt. Hey. Listen, I believe regrets are good for one thing, and that’s for not making the same mistakes. We’re not just going to sit still and claim we’re happy enough anymore. It’s not the same as starting over, but whatever we’ve ruined, we can try to set right.” Blaine squeezes Kurt’s hand. “And we can make up for all the years of romance we missed. When I’m with you, I’m so much happier than I ever thought I could be. I want everyone to know how much you mean to me. Like, I could sing it from mountaintops. I’m not even exaggerating. I want to marry you in the sappiest way possible. That’s the future I see. Okay?”

“More than okay.” When Kurt thinks of being married to Blaine, he can see what people mean when they talk about marriage like it’s sacred, instead of like it’s a trap. With Blaine right in front of him, it’s easier to focus on the future instead of everything that went wrong. Just a little longer, and they won’t have to be apart. He can take this suitcase and go…somewhere. Somewhere where they can be together.

"Okay then. What are we doing up here on our own?" Blaine pushes the cork back in the wine. "We're not doing this so we can hide from the world. C’mon."

Kurt steals one more kiss for courage. He holds Blaine’s hand on the way down the stairs. 

***

With an arm stretched across the stairway, Kurt blocks Blaine from continuing and gestures for Blaine to shush. It’s only then that Blaine notices voices carrying from further in the house.

“I guess sneaking around is just what we do,” Blaine says wryly.

Kurt shushes him. “I will happily add eavesdropping to my list of sins.”

Blaine waits with Kurt’s hand over his heart. He swears his heart beats differently around Kurt. He didn’t know it could thud so dramatically and feel good at the same time. Kurt holds onto him like he’s forgotten to stop. Even as they listen Blaine mostly hears the steady thud.

Tina’s laughter carries. It’s a relief to hear Tina laugh, but he didn’t know Tina was going to - follow him? Crack the passcode on his phone and find the address to Kurt and Mercedes’ house? Stalk a celebrity? ~~~~

“I thought I talked her out of this,” Blaine says.

“Shh, sound works both ways, Blaine.”

It’s adorable how intense Kurt gets about these things. Blaine indulges him even though he is firmly against the idea of hiding anymore. Kurt and Blaine creep close enough to hear what Tina and Mercedes say.

“Can you toast with truffles?” Mercedes asks.

Tina responds with, “Cheers!”

They’re probably not the first of Tina’s infamous bourbon-infused truffles Tina and Mercedes will consume, given how hard they both laugh when it’s not even funny. It turns out Mercedes, like Tina, is a happy drunk. Thank goodness for that.

“I had a lot of sweets when I was in a Too Young to be Bitter group when I _was_ young,” Tina explains around a mouthful. “I tell myself it’s still true. I’m too young to feel stuck. Too young to be afraid of starting over.”

“Too young to feel like I wasted years of my life?”

“Old enough to _stop_.” When Tina speaks next, it’s thick with chocolate and alcohol again. “The key with these things is to savor it. Let it melt on your tongue.”

“It tastes too much like bourbon like that,” Mercedes laughs.

“You have to feel it each time you take a bite to make it worth it. It’s like a sense memory. I close my eyes and I think of every other miserable thing I got through when trying not to be bitter. Somehow I mostly managed then, and I can mostly manage this time too. And if I call myself out on my bullshit inspirational pep talks, at least I’ve got chocolate.”

“Um, did you by chance read that _Eat, Pray, Love_ book in your book club?”

“ _Eat_ was my favorite. Everything else was a letdown after that. The travel sounded nice, though. I meant to have a wilder youth that involved traipsing all over. Blaine and I have our fun, but... Wherever the next stop on your tour is, I bet I've never been there." 

“Well,” Mercedes says after a decisive pause. “That’s a shame. Come with me. Just for a stop or two. You’ll be less lonely. I’ll have someone to talk to. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.”

“Oh my god. Are you kidding? Oh my god. This is going to be the coolest series of moments to ever happen to me – of course it has to be a big thing! The biggest thing. Am I a roadie? Are there code names? Am I a bad mom for saying yes so immediately?”

Mercedes may not like him yet, but she's Blaine’s new favorite person for causing that reaction in Tina. Blaine steps out of the stairway to voice his support before she begins to doubt what she wants.

“You absolutely should do it, Tina, the kids will be fine.”

Kurt rolls his eyes at Blaine giving them away. He follows anyway.

Tina and Mercedes lie on the area rug, bare feet hanging off onto hardwood floors, looking up at the ceiling like it’s a sky full of stars. They halfway sit up at Blaine’s voice. Mercedes looks so stunningly different from the world-weary woman who answered the door. She and Tina both have a glint in their eye as they exchange a look at the entrance he makes.

Blaine isn’t deterred by making a minor scene. He’s completely over feeling shame. “With how shaken up everything is, why not shake it just a little more? This is the perfect time for you to do something for yourself. I can manage the gym and I could use the time to reconnect with the kids anyway. And Kurt can even help!”

“Woah there.” Kurt balks.

Maybe it’s too much too soon, but Blaine can see the future for them and he’s ready to grab at it. It hasn’t been fair for him to be excited for his future and for Tina to only lose what she once had. He had no idea what to offer her, but Mercedes has, which means Blaine can fall back on supportive pep talks.

Tina eyes Kurt. “Well, at least he’s cute.”

Blaine belatedly realizes Tina and Kurt have yet to meet.

“Doesn’t really help, does it?” Mercedes gives Blaine a look.

“I know!” They dissolve into companionable giggles. “I hoped it would.” Tina liberates the bottle from Blaine’s grasp and takes a swig.

“Does no one believe in glasses?” Blaine looks from Tina to Kurt, who shrugs. “Tina, I don’t know if this is a -”

“Pretty sure we’ve all shared spit by proxy.” Tina takes another swig before offering it to Mercedes.

Mercedes leans into Tina’s side like they’ve been best friends for more than an hour. “What do you bet Blaine knows where I keep my wine glasses?”

“Not taking it.”

She’d win that bet. Mercedes has been gone so often – it’s been easy for Blaine to pretend in this place. It’s where he first pictured having a life with Kurt and not just stolen moments.

Kurt returns with an eyeroll and four glasses. “Are you up for extra company?” Blaine hears the strain in his voice from asking when he expects to be told no.

Blaine can see Tina mentally calculating if she’s willing to share her bourbon truffles. Mercedes stares in shock.

“I think we’re going to need more wine.” Mercedes accepts the glass and the small smile Kurt offers her.

Blaine swallows his protests along with half a glass of wine in one gulp. He brought the wine without thinking because the very least he could do is bring a hostess gift to the woman whose husband he stole away from her. It was just meant to be a gesture. In Blaine’s perfect picture of their future, they’re happy without any intoxicants and their laughs aren’t a little too raw, the distance between them a little too cautiously guarded. But maybe a slightly altered reality is the way they come to terms with each other.

“Oh god, we’re hanging out like friends already.” Tina shakes her head. “Are we there? Where in the timeline is figuring out how to spend time together? Is it after processing you exist? It’s supposed to be after, right?”

“Hey, the two of you started it.” Mercedes gestures at both Cohen-Changs.

Kurt downs his glass of wine. “Like a Band-Aid, right? Have at it.”

Blaine rests his hand on Kurt’s arm. “This doesn’t have to be ugly: We were friends before; it looks like you two are on the road to friendship now; Kurt and I obviously get along great...” ~~~~

Kurt silently gestures for Blaine to stop talking.

“I really believe that,” Blaine says anyway. He makes himself comfortable dropping to the rug to form the beginning of a circle with Tina and Mercedes and hopes Kurt follows his lead into relaxing as well. “I just… I want us all to be happy, not avoiding each other for the rest of our lives, because we can’t. We’re too entangled and, frankly, we’ve got enough drama without intentionally adding more. Being awkward about all this is another way to waste time between here and being happy. We can choose to not be.”

“Too much earnestness too soon, Bee,” Tina cautions, unsuspectingly mirroring Kurt in trying to rein him in.

“Is this another thing from _Eat, Pray, Love_?” Mercedes laughs. “Planning some kind of timeline for when life goes back to normal?”

Kurt breaks his stony silence to say, “I don’t know – I never made it past _Eat_.”

Tina decides Kurt’s response is worth offering him the tray of bourbon truffles she has so far guarded carefully while asking, “What the fuck, Blaine?”

“What?”

Tina gestures emphatically between her and Kurt.

“Couple of hedonists,” Mercedes snorts with another laugh like it’s a familiar joke between them. “This is going to feel familiar.”

Tina and Kurt respond with twin haughty expressions, Kurt’s marred by daintily nibbling at the truffle he’s been offered. Blaine almost bursts with affection. He knows it shows. Maybe it’s too soon – Kurt and Mercedes struggle to be in the same room and Tina, save for brief flashes of rage, has mostly been in denial. Maybe he should just let it happen without grand declarations. Or maybe alcohol is all that fuels this moment and they’ll all go back tomorrow to nursing their separate hurts along with their hangovers. But Blaine doesn’t need the alcohol to feel hopeful. He’s ready to not hold anything in. ~~~~

Mercedes shakes her head and asks Tina, “Is he always like this?” It’s not mean, so Blaine doesn’t mind.

Tina laughs at him and covers her mouth with her hand. Everything is hilarious with barely half a glass of wine in her. Not that Blaine fares much – or any – better. His head gets woozy at the mere suggestion of alcohol. It’s how a dopey grin ends up on his face. He can’t help feeling good. He offers Tina a high five. Mercedes and Kurt share a bemused look when they think he can’t see them, but that feels like a victory to Blaine too.

One drink leads to another without any thought to how they’re getting home. Well, Blaine thinks about it, but he’d rather make this moment last as long as possible in hopes of making the next time they're all together easier. Tina and Blaine’s friend Sam comes to collect them and greets them with, “I need one Cohen-Chang under each arm. Okay? I’m not dropping one of you like last time. If you both resist blowing chunks on the way home _and_ if you’re buying I’ll let you stop for tacos.”

And then Sam catches sight of Mercedes. “Woah.” He sways. Tina and Blaine sway with him. Blaine didn’t know Sam was such a fan, but he’s clearly starstruck by Mercedes. He doesn’t stop staring. (Honestly, if she hadn’t looked so hurt as his existence, and if Blaine weren’t overwhelmingly determined to become friends, Blaine would have been equally starstruck.)

“Are you going somewhere too?” Sam asks her. “I can do that – take you, I mean. No trouble. Just…wherever you wanna go.”

“Some other time. Thank you.” It’s not just alcohol in Mercedes’ smile anymore. It seems genuine. Blaine has heard she’s great with her fans.

“It’s not – I’m not a driver. I mean, I drive, but that’s not what I do. Well, I do drive, but… It’s summer: I don’t technically have a job. Because I’m a teacher!” Sam fishes a pen out of Tina’s bag and a business card out of Blaine’s pocket. He writes his name and number above Blaine’s. “I don’t really bother with business cards because it’s not like 10th graders want them, and I’d just get a lot of crank calls that way, and I enjoy a good crank call but I’d much prefer if you would. Call.”

“Are you drunk too?” Tina asks at the same time Blaine whispers too loudly, “Sam, she lives here.”

Sam clears his throat. “Okay, time to go.”

“Ohh, but this was good,” Tina protests. She looks at Mercedes. “We’re really going on tour?”

“Hell yes. We’ll talk logistics when you’re sober,” Mercedes promises.

Blaine loves her for that kindness. He might survive Mercedes never liking him as long as he can remind himself of this moment.

Blaine blows Kurt a kiss goodbye before they goes back to the lives that aren’t quite ready to let them be together. They’re getting there. He leaves Kurt with his half-packed boxes and Mercedes with her sobering look and forces a spring into his stumble. Soon, he and Kurt are going to have that life he and Kurt talked about. And if they’re lucky, they won’t have to enjoy it alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Next Steps

Sam hugs Blaine hard. Blaine doesn’t realize how bad he wants a hug until he’s clinging back, his chin tucked into Sam’s shoulder, for as long as Sam’s arms are still around him.

“Thanks for agreeing to come over,” Blaine says once he feet touch the ground again. “I think it’ll help the feeling of normalcy.” Right now, he’ll do anything to convince his kids he’s still the same person they’ve known their whole lives, even if that comes from nothing more than goofing off with their high school glee club teacher. ~~~~

“Absolutely. We’ve got this whole new normalcy thing covered. You and me are gonna be like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen – super cool gay and straight bros, hanging out, making everyone else wish they had this.”

“They have the best friendship,” Blaine agrees. His with Sam is pretty great too. Blaine and Sam became friends when Wesley started high school and found a new favorite after school activity in glee club. The club needed a parent to volunteer to help with sectionals, and Blaine and Sam just clicked. Blaine’s kids adore Sam as much as the rest of his students. If Sam is cool with Blaine, maybe they will be too.

Winnie strums her guitar idly in the other room, no recognizable tune taking shape yet. Wesley joins her on the piano, equally soft and noncommittal. They’ve taken to sharing the space Blaine is in, but with a wide berth, able to retreat or invite themselves in as they’d like. Blaine doesn’t push them. They know he’s around, which means they can close the distance when they’re ready.

“Give me a few minutes with the schedule and then we’ll figure out where you can help.” Blaine flips through his weathered planner, penciling in the classes he’ll cover for Tina to see where the scheduling conflicts are. Thankfully, Wesley can drive himself around. (Blaine and Tina are supposed to teach Winnie this summer.) With school out for the summer, Sam can help with the rest and is easy to bribe with food and company. When summer ends, they’ll hopefully have a better idea of what they’re doing.

Sam watches over Blaine’s shoulder. “Is it going to be weird with Tina gone?”

“It’ll be weird being the last adult standing. They’ll really outnumber me now.” Blaine’s so used to being part of a team. Together, he and Tina somehow manage to tackle chores and childrearing to make most of one fully functional adult with a lot of pep talks and humoring each other. He misses that already. “Kurt doesn’t want to stay here, even while Tina’s gone.”

“Who do you think would flip out more at coming back to find Kurt moved into your bedroom and taking over Tina’s space like she was never even here, Tina or the kids?” Sam responds conversationally.

“I didn’t say it was a great idea! I said I wanted it.” Blaine is too optimistic for reality, once again. “We got him all packed up and ready to go _somewhere_ , but Mercedes doesn’t want word of their divorce getting out before they let it out. Practically is really cramping my new _don’t wait to be happy_ philosophy. I just… I asked him to marry me because I want our lives to be together. I want to be with him somehow.”

He’s been frustratingly disconnected from Kurt ever since they jointly came out to their families. Time with Kurt can’t be a priority at the same time Blaine’s trying to rebuild trust. He’s busy building toward the future, which means being present. He doesn’t want to be with Kurt and have the feeling that he needs to be somewhere else nagging at every stolen moment. (He doesn’t want moments to be _stolen_. Like a crime, like something that should be secret, like a sense of shame has ever served Blaine well.)

Blaine likes to think he’s a hip dad, so at least he’s kept up on the wonders of Skype and SnapChat to help alleviate missing Kurt. Feeling closer to Kurt is one tap away. Just not close enough.

Sam pats at him sympathetically. “Want me to ask your kids if these windows are easy to sneak in and out of?”

“No, that’s - Well, now I’m curious what they’ll say.”

“Or, you know, you could let them meet Kurt with as few traumas as possible.”

“I did volunteer Kurt to help out while Tina’s gone.” Blaine eyes the schedule again and then pulls up their shared Google calendar. Kurt will be nervous, but he’ll manage. And if it means a ride to the mall or over to a friend’s house when their parents are busy, Blaine’s kids will be motivated to agree. Maybe Kurt can do a trial run, even.

“There you go. Problem solved. Tell Kurt he should spend time with me too so I can make sure he’s good enough for you!”

“That’s… not a service I expect you to provide,” Blaine says with humor. “You’re my friend, not my father. Not that that’s a service I want him to provide either.” As amusing as it is to imagine Sam trying to play that role for him, he shouldn’t let it happen.

“Still. You’re usually an open book. I feel like I should have noticed, but I had no idea he existed, or that anything was going on with you at all. It’s weird I didn’t know.”

“At first, there wasn’t anything to tell,” Blaine begins tentatively, picking at a dog-eared corner of his planner. He’s not used to talking openly yet. Sam’s a good friend, but Blaine’s been careful. “I told myself there wasn’t anything to tell. It was a silly crush, and I’d had plenty of silly crushes before.” Like the one he briefly had on Sam. Thankfully Sam remained oblivious to that as well. “I didn’t do anything about them. I wasn’t going to.”

“You’re not a convincing liar, you know,” Sam says with affection in his teasing.

Blaine had plenty of years of lying (unconvincingly) to himself, and he went into overdrive lying to himself about Kurt. Blaine was supposed to be friends with Kurt and in love with Tina, and it ended up very much the other way. He kept wondering about the life he wasn’t living, and what it would be like if it were with Kurt. What if he let himself be in love with Kurt?

“I freaked out so hard,” Blaine admits. Maybe the kids can overhear from the other room. Words have a way of spilling out of Blaine. Blaine doesn’t stop them. Let them overhear if they want. Their family believes in honesty for a reason – it eats up at Blaine when he has something to hide. “As soon as I said something, we’d never be the same again. I had to be ready to chance ruining everything, because I couldn’t just go back and say, ‘oops, crisis over, never mind.’ And the longer I took waiting to be ready, the more obvious it became that I took too long.” Kurt had been so calm in the midst of Blaine’s crisis. Resigned, maybe. Blaine let Kurt chase some of the worries away. He could forget, for just a little bit. But hiding from the world wasn’t a long-term plan. “And now here we are.” ~~~~

“Here we are. Moving on. Starting over. No regrets. Whatever other two word inspirational statements feel appropriate.”

Blaine nods. He has a future to focus on. His infamous optimism will carry him through.

“Oh, hey, in the spirit of moving on and starting over and no regrets and all that, how taboo is being interested in a woman who’s still married if it’s to a gay guy? That practically doesn’t count, right?”

“I didn’t realize you, um. How long have you been sitting on that?” Blaine asks. Sam has been friends with him and Tina for years and there’s never been a hint of romance between them.

“Like all week! Do you think you can help me out? Or, like, get Kurt to help me out if it’s too awkward for you?”

Since Sam found out about Blaine and Tina’s divorce, then. Around the same time he came to rescue them from their drunken selves at Kurt and Mercedes’. Presumably the divorce was the deciding factor, and not seeing them drunk off their asses (for not the first time).

Getting drunk together once hardly makes Tina and Kurt besties. Blaine can picture Kurt offering Tina dating advice and it does not go well. Anyway, Blaine wants Tina to move on too. “I’ll help.”

***

“Sam?” Tina clarifies for the third time. The exuberant music isn’t to blame, and neither is their tapping along with a routine to a Beyoncé song Blaine learns so he can teach it while she’s gone. Her hearing is fine. His judgment clearly isn’t.

“It could be good for - ”

“You can keep the rest of that condescending sentence to yourself.”

It would be so convenient to fall for her husband’s best friend before she even has to fully come to terms with being divorced. It’d be like the plot of a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy. She can see why Blaine likes the idea. If she moves on, he doesn’t even have to feel that bad about dumping her.

“Not happening,” Tina insists. Blaine was once convenient too. She’s not falling in love that way again.

Blaine watches her feet as he mimics each step. “Well, can you help me figure out how to let him down? Apparently he’s been really into you for like a week now.”

“‘No.’”

“Yeah, okay. That’s fair. I’ll think of something.”

“‘No’ is the something to say. Just leave it there and don’t make it weird.”

“I made it weird already, huh?” Blaine’s nose wrinkles.

Tina can make a list of weird things in her life right now: Her husband trying to set her up. Specifically, her husband trying to set her up with her kids’ high school teacher they brought home like a lost puppy one day and who hasn’t left since. Her husband leaving her for a man who works as a mechanic but sounds like Mandy Moore. Packing up to be away from home because home is a hard place to be. Preparing to follow a celebrity around because they might not have much in common, but they have a really specific shared experience.

“Everything you touch, Weird King Midas,” Tina says lightly. “Tell Sam your approval ruined the drama factor for me.”

Blaine smiles. “Okay.”

“And stop looking at my feet already. You should know the steps.”

Blaine holds her gaze in their reflection instead. He follows each move she makes, attentive and smiling at their reflections he watches closely. It’s a complicated routine but he looks like he’s having the time of his life. Blaine’s classes tend to be more about exuberance than skill, but he has that too. Tap may not be his forte, but he’ll do it if it’s asked of him, and he’ll do it well.

He isn’t even trying to be cute, and isn’t that the most unfair part. He doesn’t have to try. How is she supposed to move on from that?

The chorus loops back around, and Beyoncé begins again. “ _Baby it's you / You're the one I love / You're the one I need / You're the only one I see.…_ ”

“Shut up, Beyoncé,” Tina mutters.

“What?” Blaine’s eyebrows arch into triangles that shouldn’t be so cute.

“It’ll be good to get a break from this song. It’s all yours now.” Tina choreographs her own routines. She gets to pick the steps and the music, the mood. At the time of this routine’s inception, she was as hopelessly in love with her husband as she had been 20 years ago. Every love song she liked was a little bit about him. Blaine has ruined whole albums, whole _decades_ of music. “Can you take me through boxing next? I’d like to hit something.”

***

Kurt checks his reflection in the rearview mirror of his Navigator. He doesn’t know what he expects to have changed. He’s the same man he’s always been, although now closer to 50 than 40, and superficial fussing with his hair doesn’t change that. He’s an acquired taste. Odd. He’s either dorky and awkward or too cold, too closed off to make a connection with. At what age is too old to care what middle schoolers think of him?

Kurt is comfortable with his own kid. He both understands and adores her. Other people’s kids are as much of a mystery as, well, other people. Getting them to like him has never been his forte. Blaine loves his kids. It’s not an act like some less involved fathers out there – he really, truly thinks they’re great. Kurt really, truly needs them to be at least neutral toward him eventually.

Kurt gets lost in his thoughts, and then suddenly there’s a small child clambering into his passenger seat. Small for her age, at least.

“Hi, Wendi, I’m – ”

“You’re Kurt. My dad made sure I had a picture of you, your car, and your license plate.” She waves a phone screen at him. “Mom also said you’d sound like that. Is this Mercedes Jones?”

Kurt smiles for a moment at the music that accompanies him wherever he goes. Being a fan of Mercedes is even older than their marriage, and it’s going to last far longer. He and Mercedes have been so distant, since long before he ever brought up divorce, but he has her music for companionship. It’s either masochistic or comforting to keep relying on even now. “You can play with the radio if you want.”

“Oh, no, I need to know everything about her. Mr. Evans asked me to research her as his resident expert on youth culture. Otherwise she’s not going to think he’s interested enough,” Wendi says matter of factly.

Kurt drunkenly recalls Sam bumbling over himself as soon as he set eyes on Mercedes. It’s a forgivable response. Mercedes brings out that level of awe in a lot of people.

“And how’s research going? Is it making Mr. Evans more interesting?” He aims for casual. It’s not. He loves celebrity gossip, but as someone who’s known her since they were both lonely outcasts in high school, acting like Mercedes is just any celebrity to him rings false. He’s hardly a casual fan.

“I don’t think it’s the way to impress anyone, but that’s a mistake he can make for himself,” Wendi replies candidly. “At least it’s fun. It’s like homework, but for summer. And I like her a lot anyway.”

Desire to be liked as well wins out over reason.

“I know Mercedes Jones.” Kurt blurts. At Wendi’s skeptical look, he adds, “She’s really cool. We’re friends.”

The word ‘friends’ slips out. It’s what he’d like to eventually be again, but it’s not true at the moment. At the moment, Kurt makes Mercedes wince each time he comes into the same room as her.

“I’m not a little kid. You can’t lie to me and expect me to believe it.”

“I really do. I’ll prove…” Kurt eyes his phone tucked in his cup holder. He knows better than to touch it while entrusted with Blaine’s kid’s wellbeing. Even if he does want to impress her. “I’ll prove it when we stop at a light.”

When the light is red, He flips through his pictures. Selfie. Selfie. Food. Pictures from his daughter at her prep school. Blaine. He searches for one of him and Mercedes together. He keeps scrolling past all the evidence of how far he and Mercedes have grown apart.

The light changes to green. Kurt dismisses his fleeting thought of handing over his phone to Wendi. There shouldn’t be anything too scandalous on there, but it’s not the best impression. “I’ll show you at the next one.”

Wendi scoffs. “You’re not friends; you’re married.”

Kurt belatedly realizes what she’s accusing him of lying about. Blaine and Tina must have told the kids, despite Mercedes’ request to wait for a statement to be released. He’s having a completely different conversation than he thought.

“We were…” Kurt begins tentatively.

“Are. It takes a long time to get a divorce.”

“We’re friends now.” It feels more fake each time the words rest on his tongue. They _were_. He didn’t mean to make them not anymore. It’s not like he asked Mercedes to marry him with the intention of hooking up with men behind her back. The idea of even finding anyone gay in Lima, Ohio was unfathomable, let alone following through when he was nervous at even the thought of talking to so someone he was attracted to. He’d been so young, and there seemed a permanence to being alone in the world. His queerness only became more pronounced as he got older. And then came the kiss he didn’t consent to from a tormentor. He panicked. When he realized Mercedes’ crush on him, his sense of self-preservation told him to go with it. Mercedes wasn’t put off by Kurt’s voice, the way he talked, how he held himself, everything that worked together to betray his difference. She was lonely too, and also secretly fabulous in her own way. They were meant to be happy enough. Only Kurt was miserable and couldn’t explain it, withdrawing because he didn’t know what else to do, and ultimately making them both miserable.

“I still want to see the picture.” Wendi holds out her hand expectantly. “Please.”

Kurt settles on a family picture from two Christmases ago, a tree sparkling behind them and their daughter between them. They look like the kind of family he used to wish they could be.

Wendi snatches the phone out of Kurt’s hand. “Wow! She’s that glamorous in real life too? Can I meet her before my mom goes on tour?”

“I, um.” Kurt is not in any position to ask Mercedes for more favors. Wendi looks so hopefully up at him in a trick she must have learned from Blaine, which leads Kurt to finishing that sentence with, “I’ll ask.”

***

Tina ends up at Mercedes’ home again, thankfully without bourbon in any form this time. Her excuse for the visit – reviewing logistics for the tour – is flimsy, and Mercedes doesn’t press her on it. Mercedes could use the company, since Kurt has virtually become a ghost and their daughter conveniently was invited away for a week at a friend’s family’s beach house in Cape Cod before ever returning home from school.

Mercedes hardly blames Jackie for wanting to let the dust settle first. Mercedes spends so much feeling overwhelmingly wounded and betrayed that she’s not sure where to even begin to bring herself back to functional. But with Tina around she feels closer to getting there.

“Is Beyoncé ruined for you too?” Tina asks. She plays with her phone, her music library at her fingertips.

“Heaven forbid. Why?”

“I’m making a road trip soundtrack for us but I’m limiting it to songs that don’t bum us out. So far that seems to mean songs I don’t know yet so we can ruin those too.”

“Stick to her more upbeat work, then.”

“It’s not just the sad songs, though. The songs that used to make me happy are sad now too. That’s _all the songs_.”

“I thought you were making a list of what to pack.”

“I’m packing songs.”

Mercedes shakes her head. She’s growing fond of Tina already. “Put on ‘Diva.’ And put earplugs on the packing list you’re supposed to be making.”

Tina smiles at that.

Mercedes and Tina’s list of things to pack becomes a list of songs they can still listen to and another list for Mercedes’ album of heart wrenching covers that she needs to stop joking about before it actually happens. They’re interrupted when Mercedes’ phone rings. Kurt’s name and picture flash on the caller ID. ~~~~

“Is he not here?” Mercedes asks. They’ve been avoiding each other, but so far haven’t resorted to calling from inside the same home.

Tina shrugs. “Maybe he’s with Blaine? This was our problem to begin with, huh?”

Mercedes picks up the phone.

“Hi!” Kurt says with more cheer than she’s heard from him in months. “Can you do something for me before you leave?”

“Help me figure out what to say and I’ll make the announcement. You can move out after that happens.”

“It’s actually not about that.”

“Help me do it anyway because it needs to get done.”

“You don’t need me –”

“Kurt, I don’t want to do it any more than you do. Shouldn’t _you_ want it? You want the divorce – what about the steps we need to take to get there?” He made her a divorcée. Because of him she’ll be a clueless punch line for not knowing she was married to a gay man because everyone is going to say it was obvious. He gets to be in love and starting fresh, while she’ll be alone and stuck with the broken remains. She has so many reasons to resist, but none of them are going to help her move on.

“It’s your career. I’m sure your team has an idea of what’s best for you.”

It’s the same line he’s given her every time. It’s not the answer she’s looking for.

Tina not so subtly leans in so she can eavesdrop.

“I told one of Blaine’s kids you could _maybe_ meet her before you and Tina head out,” Kurt says, edging the conversation back into what he wants.

“They told the kids anyway, then?” Mercedes attempts to make eye contact with Tina, who suddenly looks everywhere else. “Does she know we’re married?”

“Were.”

“ _Are_ ,” Mercedes corrects right back. “We’re going to keep being married until we’re ready to say we’re not.”

“I’m not standing in your way. Say whatever you need to say. I’m giving you permission. Just consider this, please.”

Mercedes so far enjoys Tina in her own overbearing way, but three mini-Tina-and-Blaine combos as her new – they’re not step-children to her, are they? Three kids that aren’t hers but will somehow be family is more than she signed up for. She’s not going to say that in front of Tina.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Mercedes says. It’s hard to end a phone call with him and not end it with ‘love you.’

As soon as the words are out Mercedes knows she’ll agree, as a kind gesture if not a commitment to being part of a family that’s not hers. Even if things fall apart with Kurt, which is just one more sadness looming over her, she’s invited Tina into her life. Whether this is a temporary comfort or the beginning of friendship, Mercedes’ thing with Tina means caring about her loved ones too.

Tina doesn’t pretend she didn’t hear every word. She leans in further, fully ready to dish.

Mercedes sighs. “It didn’t just become my marriage when he came out. He could spare a few words now that it’s over.” Mercedes will do what Kurt wants, but she should at least get what she wants too.

“Like a funeral,” Tina cracks. It’s not funny. “A marriage postmortem.”

“Yeah. Say some nice words about it and put it to rest. Not ‘whatever your team thinks it best.’ Kurt and I _were_ a team. I want him to care. He should have something to say.” ~~~~

All joking drops from Tina’s voice as she says, “Mercedes. He’s giving you permission to make him the bad guy.”

Now that Tina says it, that does sound like Kurt. He’s always been more about gestures that show he cares. Add it to the list of things Mercedes didn’t see coming. Kurt has a skill for surprising her, it seems.

“I wouldn’t.” Mercedes has plenty of unkind feelings toward him for how much he hurt her, but those feelings belong to her. No one else gets to co-opt them for their own agenda. “That’s not what I’m asking him for.”

“I didn’t say that, I said what he’s offering.”

For once Tina’s sympathetic look doesn’t make Mercedes feel better. Have she and Kurt really gotten to a point where he thinks she wants him to be the villain of her story?

“I’ve got a great idea, but you’ve got to agree with an idea you’ll think is not so great to go with it,” Tina says.

“Okay. I’m not agreeing, but go ahead.”

“Offer an exclusive interview to a gay magazine – _Out_ or _The Advocate_ or some other one I can’t think of right now. Make sure they put you on the cover. You’re gorgeous, which the girl readers will appreciate, and you deserve the cover. A gay magazine will want to put a positive spin on it for you and help you out a little more. You want to keep your hip gay-friendly cred, presumably.”

That all sounds fine. Mercedes purses her lips. “Maybe I am agreeing.”

“You’ve got to sell it, though. You’ve got to pick one emotion and stick with it. Otherwise anyone who reads what you have to say will pick one for you, and it might not be the one you want. If you don’t want people to rage on your behalf, don’t give them any material. Wish him well. Emphasis that you’re friends.”

"Do you do crisis management?" Mercedes asks.

Tina laughs the compliment off. "I have three kids. Every day is a crisis." 

“Thank you.” Tina may want to brush her support off, but Mercedes wants to be sincere.

“This only works if that’s what _you_ want to say,” Tina cautions. “Otherwise this is a completely different conversation.”

Mercedes nods. She wants to have the kind of message Tina suggests. She can’t share the intricacies of how she’s feeling, with all the ups and downs and nuances that’ll get lost, and count on them not getting twisted for amusement, cruelty, or click-through. She’s not going to put something ugly out into the world. Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to act like she’s fine. “Is that the not-great portion of your idea?”

“Oh, no, my ideas get worse!”

Mercedes laughs despite herself. “So what am I agreeing to?”

“A funeral.”

“Tina, that’s awful,” Mercedes scolds. “I’m not a fan of those kinds of jokes.”

“It’s not a joke. You want Kurt to say something about your marriage? Ask for a eulogy. We’ll hold a double funeral. You’ll get the closure you want from the statement he won’t make. We'll make peace with the end of pretty much everything we thought we had. Or have a cleansing cry. It could be fun.”

Mercedes considers it. “You’re really, actually excited by this idea?”

“I love it.”

“Okay, then. I guess we’re adding one more thing to the checklist before we leave Ohio.”


	4. The Funeral

Kurt has resolved not to let “I miss you” and “I love you” be the only words he says to Blaine. They’re the obvious ones. He still says “I love you” enough that Blaine won’t fear that he doesn’t anymore, but he lets “I miss you” wait. They may be the two phrases that keep Kurt persevering through awkward, life-changing times, but they’re just as likely to lead to pining and despair at how far apart they still are.

“Maybe I should show up for the new instructor at Adult Tap,” Kurt teases Blaine over the phone on his way back home.

They make plans instead. Just little, inconsequential plans. Nothing about the future except that they’re going to share it.

“What time is it, again? Do I have to reserve a spot?” Kurt asks.

“Oh, no, I’m not helping you watch me make a fool of myself! You can go to the website for that if you’re determined enough.”

The gym website is bookmarked as one of Kurt’s favorites. There’s a picture of Blaine on it that Kurt mooned over before he began collecting pictures of Blaine of his own.

“Just you wait. I’ll be your worst but most devoted student.” Watching Blaine lead other people their age tap dancing through their own midlife crises might just be adorable enough for Kurt to follow through on his teasing. Tap isn’t one of Kurt’s interests, but if he’s willing to follow Blaine into upending both their lives, he’s willing to follow Blaine anywhere. He’ll trip over his own feet for hours at an end.

“Devoted, huh? Looking forward to it.”

Blaine’s voice warms every cold, closed off part of him. Kurt can’t resist letting out the “I love you” on the tip of his tongue.

For once, the house that Kurt doesn’t think of as his anymore isn’t silent when Kurt gets home. Music he doesn’t know plays. Mercedes hasn’t wanted anything to do with music, and yet there’s no one else it could be. Not unless their daughter comes home early as a surprise, which he should stop hoping for. Jackie has said too little for him to know how she’s taking the news, but her absence speaks volumes.

Mercedes waits in the guest room he’s taken over. Her songwriting notebook is open and blank in front of her.

“Do you want this room?” Kurt asks. There isn’t much to it. His boxes and bags are packed neatly in the corner waiting for a new home. He’s been living out of a suitcase. There’s no reason for Mercedes to choose it over their master room with its walk in closet and 20 years of comforting belongs, but there’s even less reason for her to choose to seek him out. He’s given her as much space to work through her hurt alone as he can.

“Oh, I’m just here to take the floor. We’ve got some things to clear up.” Mercedes gives him a measured look. Her voice isn’t heated, but it is serious.

He braces for a brand new take on what’s becoming an old argument. “If this is about the statement…”

“Tina was here when you called. She cleared some things up for me. Kurt, I’m not going to turn you into a cartoon villain. That’s not how I want to solve our problems. I’m going to do an interview to talk about us getting divorced. I’m going to say some nice things about you. Make it easy for me to say them, because you acting like I don’t exist isn’t helping on the cartoon villain front.”

“If that’s what I need to be for you, it’s okay. I can be that.” It’s one of the few kind things he can think to do besides get out of her life completely. All her hurt and anger have to go somewhere. He’ll take it if it means showing he still cares. “We don’t have to be like Blaine and Tina.”

“Thank goodness for that, because denial handled adorably it still denial. The disaster clock is ticking for them. But they’re trying.”

Blaine and Tina make staying close – _being_ close – look so easy. For better or worse, they’re both desperate to keep the other in their life. Kurt both envies and judges them for it. He doesn’t get how they can act like best friends in the face of 20 years of living a lie and an impending divorce.

“Stop waiting for us to kick you out of our lives, Kurt. Letting me hate you might be too easy for both of us. I’d rather you try to make me like you again.”

“Did Blaine put you up to this?” It sounds like Blaine, who spent his first meeting with Mercedes tipsy and waxing about how being awkward around each other is just more time lost. Blaine makes no secret about wanting to be everyone’s best friend. “I told him to leave you alone.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because I’m seeing him at the funeral and I can’t have both of you not talking to me.”

“Who… Who died?” Kurt’s so lost.

“This.” Mercedes gesture between them. “You may be happy about it, but I need to mourn. Which means the kind thing for you to do is show up and say something nice about it, even if you’re glad it’s dead.”

Mercedes has always been the kind one in their relationship. Her heart is bigger than her grudges. As for Kurt, he doesn’t share as much as he could. Everyone eventually questions his sexuality for him, but Mercedes never did, and the best way to safeguard against questioning was holding himself at a distance. Don’t share too much. Don’t give yourself away.

Given how determined they were to fight loneliness together, it was a lonely way to live.

He’s been silent on purpose for years. For this, he’ll have something to say.

***

Mercedes wore white when this all began. Now she’s head to toe in black as she makes her way to the car. It’s a fitting contrast, mirroring the trajectory of her relationship with Kurt: from celebration to mourning, from beginning to end, from young to old, from gay husband to gay ex-husband.

Jackie whistles as Mercedes approaches. “If you’re trying to show him what he’s missing, I think you’ve got a lost, gay cause, but if you’re trying to tempt me into raiding your closet…”

“I’m dressing for the moment.” According to Tina, everything is a production at the Cohen-Chang house, and she should dress accordingly.

Jackie took the opposite approach and dressed for the summer weather looking infinitely more comfortable in shorts and a Hummel Tire and Lube t-shirt. She holds the car door open for Mercedes.

Mercedes is greeted by the sound of her own voice when Jackie starts the car. Kurt has those CDs of hers that play on a perpetual loop whenever he drives. It’s sweet and weird that he does that. She used to think it was love. What is it now?

“Here, hold yourself.” Jackie passes over the CD and slides a new one in.

Mercedes expects the same kind of music Kurt plays at his shop for the customers to play next. Something popular and forgettable. Universally appealing.

Mercedes knows that voice, but it’s not how she’s used to hearing it. She hasn’t heard Kurt sing in years. He was teased mercilessly for his voice when they were young. Mercedes would catch snippets of soothing lullabies when Jackie was little, but they weren’t for anyone else to hear. He wouldn’t so much as carry a half-hearted “Happy Birthday” tune for anyone else, claiming he didn’t sing and later getting Jackie to do it for him. In some ways, Kurt singing to Jackie seemed like _their_ thing. Something special he shared just with her.

His warm voice fills the air.

“ _I'll remember the strength that you gave me / Now that I'm standing on my own / I'll remember the way that you saved me / I'll remember…_ ”

Right then, Mercedes knows he may only sing for Jackie, but this one’s for her.

She kind of gets why Kurt does it now. It’s comforting. They connect through music once again. Even with how hard everything has been, this is for her. And it’s beautiful. Even though it’s hard. The feeling in the song is captured for her to revisit and work through at her own pace.

The song ends, and after a moment of silence another one begins.

“Did he tell you about this?” Mercedes asks.

“I just said I’d make sure you had a chance to listen. The rest is between the two of you.”

She wants to skip ahead to see what each will be. She also wants to let them be so they can unfold like they’re intended.

Mercedes is entranced until Jackie parks the car at the Cohen-Changs.

“Keep it running for a moment.” If she keeps it running, the CD can still play.

“Mom? You know, Dad put a lot of songs on there for you. They’ll be there when we get back.” Jackie gets out and offers Mercedes her arm.

Mercedes is glad for someone to lean on.

They arrange to hold the double funeral in the Cohen-Chang backyard. Seeming silly doesn’t appear to be much of a deterrent for any of the Cohen-Changs. Even the teenagers get into it. Mercedes and Jackie arrive just in time to overhear Winnie asking her parents if she can play “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” as their exit music.

“There are only like three good funeral songs, Mom, and like a million excellent break up ones,” Winnie argues. “Just let us have this.”

“They’re so much more fun,” Wesley chimes in. “You said we could make it fun. We’re limited on _fun_ options when it comes to celebrating our parents’ divorce or mourn their marriage or however we’re billing this.” He huffs and them composes himself. “What’s appropriate here? I think we’re making that up as well.”

“Good point. Mercedes, we should add some Taylor Swift to the break up soundtrack,” Tina says.

The kids turn their attention to their guests in unison.

The Cohen-Chang children have interpreted black funeral garb eclectically, with Wesley in a superhero costume complete with cape and eye mask, Winnie in a suit and top hat that look like they’ve been stolen from the show choir costume department, and Wendi as a tiny punk rocker. Winnie applies Wendi’s eyeliner with a heavy hand.

Jackie gawks at them. Winnie tips her top hat. Kurt stands further off from this family that isn’t his yet. As for Mercedes, it makes perfect sense that this is what comes from Tina and Blaine having children.

Despite their orchestrating to meet Mercedes, the kids immediately take most interest in Jackie.

“Can you sing? You can’t have the mom you do without either singing well or having a complex.” Winnie sizes her up.

“We’re going to play, if we can decide on a song before the funeral starts,” Wesley adds. “Care to join us?”

“If we’re the only ones invited, I don’t think it has to begin promptly.” Wendi pipes up.

“Do you play an instrument? Please say something other than guitar; we’ve already got one guitar playing douche and we’re maxed out.” Wesley tugs on the rim of Winnie’s top hat.

“I can hook you up with a tambourine,” Wendi says. “We could actually use more percussion. Do you want a costume too? I think we’ve got a black feathered boa. The costumes are upstairs.”

“Maybe in a moment.” Jackie demures, polite but hesitant.

“Okay, Cohen-Changs, she can’t decide she wants to come hang with us if we stay right here.” Winnie grabs each sibling by and elbow. She leads them upstairs like the marshal of a Halloween costume parade in July.

“Did they invite me to join the family band?” Jackie asks faintly once they’re gone.

“We asked them to play nice,” Tina explains.

“We didn’t ask for that level of intensity,” Blaine clarifies. “But they’ll ease up. Eventually.”

“You don’t have to stay,” Mercedes reminds Jackie. “Your dad can drive me home.”

Kurt nods his support.

“Do you want to be here?” Jackie asks.

Mercedes’ gaze slides over to Tina. “Tina and I are humoring each other. I’m not sure which one of us is humoring the other at the moment, but we’re sticking to it.”

“Then I want to be here. Or with those weirdos and the feathered boa they promised me.” Jackie starts to follow them. She pauses at Kurt on her way to the stairs and wraps her arms around him in a prolonged hug. Kurt moves slowly through his shock to return the hug.

Tina and Mercedes pretend not to notice Kurt tear up. He used to cry so easily. That’s coming back, apparently, along with his voice.

***

Blaine steps closer as Kurt dabs at his eyes, close enough Kurt can reach for him if he wants. It’s still strange for Tina to see them together. All that affection and warmth that’s not for her. Kurt turns in to that reassuring touch.

“Are we bearing our own rings?” Blaine asks. Blaine has his off and in his hand already.

“Seems fitting.” Mercedes fiddles with hers. It’s a tiny, dainty thing. The stone is too small to even be understated and clearly older than Mercedes’ fame.

Tina glances down at hers – a sapphire set into a heavier than fashionable band picked up from a jewelry store in the mall, chosen because she didn’t want a diamond like everyone else but she still wanted bling and something study. Taking it off is another sign that things are over.

Tina wonders if Blaine and Kurt took off their rings when they were with each other or just pretended they didn’t belong to someone else.

She’s not as okay as she thought she was.

“My ring is worth too much to be left in the dirt,” Tina protests.

“It really isn’t,” Blaine tells her. “You were there – we bought it together.”

Tina shoots him a dirty look. “You make me use coasters on the coffee table we bought from Ikea, but my ring is too cheap to matter?”

“It’s not cheap in a bad way. It’s just not objectively worth much.”

“It was a _gift._ I get to do what I want with it. You don’t get to take it away.”

Blaine raises his hands in appeasement. “We don’t have to bury anything. Let’s just dig a hole and fill it back up when we’re done.”

“Why do we need a hole, then?” It’s not even Kurt’s backyard, yet he gets to have an opinion.

“It’ll be far more satisfying than just giving speeches and wandering off. Let me have my theatrics.”

Kurt makes a face, but it’s affectionate. How many arguments has Blaine prematurely won because he’s too cute to argue with?

Tina can plant a lilac bush on top of it. That can be her plan. She’ll put something beautiful on top and forget what’s underneath. Pretend life came from the hard metal when she looks out at the garden. Although the home feels less like hers now. It’s still very much her family’s – their stuff is _everywhere_ – just not hers. A hollow feeling spreads in her stomach. Soon she’ll leave. She doesn’t want to come back and feel like she has nothing.

“What, I’m supposed to be fine because you asked, so of course, whatever _you_ want? You get to decide and I’m not allowed to have any feelings about you literally taking away everything that matters to me. That’s not good enough, Blaine.”

Blaine blinks at her like he somehow didn’t see this coming.

The ring twists on Tina’s finger. Her knuckle swells in response. It won’t budge. She can’t even dramatically throw it at him.

Instead, Tina locks herself in the bathroom like her kids are prone to doing when they want to be left alone. She runs too cold water and soap over the stubborn ring. Water spills so tears don’t have to.

“I remember pre-wedding jitters. Do you think pre-funeral jitters are a thing?” Mercedes asks with a knock on the other side of the door. Tina cracks a smile and the door.

“Were you nervous?” Was she just as fooled as Tina? Thinking she was signing up for something real? Something meant to last forever?

“We were so young,” Mercedes says like that’s answer enough.

Scared but not as much as they should be, then.

Tina wasn’t one for jitters on her wedding day. She wasn’t a dainty or a faint bride. She’s all-in, full steam ahead when it comes to things she wants. She wanted Blaine bad enough to ask. She signed the papers a city hall with a sure hand. She so clearly knew what she wanted back then. They were so amused at how wild they could be, giggling at what everyone would think, the scandal they would cause. They both couldn’t stop laughing at themselves, their fingers laced together tight. Everyone assumed she was in some kind of trouble and kept asking if she was pregnant, but really she couldn’t be bothered to wait. They bought the rings on the way, along with a soft pretzel to split.

If only she could be that excited again.

“I’m not having the fun I thought I would. It was supposed to be play, and this is too real,” Tina admits. “How are you not sadder? I’m and wreck and you’re a functioning person.” She would very much like to stop feeling like her feelings are inconvenient. Like it’s selfish to take a moment to be upset at losing something she loved. Blaine’s understanding looks always have a hint of kicked puppy underneath, and now she’s locked in the bathroom with a pop star to avoid them.

“I’m always sad,” Mercedes says with a small smile. “I’m not any sadder than I’ve been. I think I’ve reached the floor on that one.”

Tina twists the ring further. “No one’s going to want it now that it’s from a failed marriage. I can’t give it to anyone. I can’t wear it. It’s just a useless piece of _junk_ now. It’s a waste.”

“Your ground isn’t going anywhere. Get a rock or a gravestone or something. You’ll know where it is.”

And where will Tina be?

Mercedes’ interview is scheduled. So is their departure. Soon they’re supposed to move on. With any luck, the sadness will abate once they start. Whatever that means.

The ring slips from Tina’s finger with a loud clank against porcelain. She pulls the stopper before it can spiral down the drain.

There’s a pale mark on her finger where it used to be. Even with the ring gone, she’s going to have the reminder for quite some time.

***

Kurt’s grip on Blaine’s hand holds him back. “You’re not going to help right now.”

Comforting Tina when she’s upset is Blaine’s job. He’s the one person who knows her best. He feels bad enough without ignoring her.

Kurt rubs at Blaine’s skin where he has Blaine caught gently at the wrist. Blaine rearranges Kurt’s grip so their fingers can intertwine. He’s not what Tina needs. Mercedes is already on her way. He’s just not used to feeling this useless when it comes to Tina.

“Just wait,” Kurt reassures.

Blaine wants to stop feeling like a bad person. How long will he have to wait for that?

“I can’t decide if this date or your proposal wins for romantic backdrop.” Kurt’s teasing eases Blaine’s attention back to him. Blaine knows it’s a distraction. It still works. “Anything to spend time together, huh?”

Blaine’s gaze lingers on Kurt’s lips. The house is unusually quiet around them. Quiet enough for Blaine to acknowledge the affection and comfort of having Kurt close. He’s missed Kurt. The beautiful reason for his current disaster. The source of his courage in saying this is who he is and what he wants.

He has a moment. Another stolen moment. Kurt is so much lovelier to look at when not through a pixelated screen. It’s like being back in high school, wondering if he can sneak a kiss without being caught and whether it’s worth it either way. As always, it’s not the right time or place.

How wrong is it to want to make out with his boyfriend while his wife is crying in the bathroom?

“We’re going to cause our own scene,” Kurt chides at their lingering closeness before doing nothing about it. “They’re going to think… and I’ll lose my right to indignation if they’re right.”

He kisses the back of Kurt’s hand. It’s private, moments like this between them, but it doesn’t have to be secret. Blaine doesn’t loosen his grip. Anyone can see. And if they can see clearly, they shouldn’t be scandalized.

Kurt’s lips part like they do when he’s surprised and pleased. It’s one of Blaine’s favorite faces to get him to make.

However they spend their time together, he’s happier for it.

Mercedes coughs to announce herself. “I think she’ll be ready in a moment.”

“So, about being more like Blaine and Tina...” Kurt trails off on purpose, his point already made. He squeezes Blaine’s hand to ease the barb.

“Oh, they’re a hot mess, but at least they’re trying to be honest now,” Mercedes responds.

Blaine smiles. He will get her to like him yet.

Blaine retrieves a shovel and heads to the garden. It keeps his hands busy. Kurt and Mercedes can have a moment they seem to need while Blaine focuses on something that can help him feel useful.

Tina is the first to join him. Her eyes are clear but there’s a rawness to how she holds herself.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Blaine tells her. He agreed because she asked.

“Get divorced?”

“Well, no, I’d still like to do that, please.”

Tina exhales loudly. “The funeral isn’t what’s hard.”

Kurt and Mercedes join them, arm in arm, more at ease than Blaine has seen them. “The kids are inside, and I quote, ‘having too much fun jamming to bother with funeral nonsense,’” Mercedes explains. “We’re on our own.”

They crowd around the small hole in the ground. Blain expects rain and an overcast sky for a funeral, but it’s July. The sun beats down. Birds sing.

“Now what?”

They each look to another for the answer. No one has a plan.

“Well, this seemed easier in theory,” Kurt says wryly.

“We’re gathered here today… We are gathered…” Blaine falters. “What comes next?”

“Should something come before that?” Kurt asks.

“We’re starting with the obvious. Sometimes being obvious helps.” Mercedes says. She gives Blaine an encouraging nod.

“We are gathered here to say goodbye, not to each other, but to, um…” Blaine falters. How to describe what’s actually over? He doesn’t want to disparage his marriage for fear of hurting Tina, but he doesn’t want to idolize it either. He wanted it to end, after all. Most people get divorced because they realize they don’t work together, but Blaine presumed they stopped liking each other in the process too, and that’s not the case at all. He married Tina because she’s one of his favorite people.

“Goodbye to what we used to be together.” Blaine finishes. “Goodbye to two marriages that have come to an end.”

When Tina asked for a funeral, he hoped he could pull it together beautifully for her. In his mind, he would know what to do. His mental image of himself is so much more competent than the truth. His head and his tongue might as well be filled with lead.

“Anyone have anything they want to say?” Tina asks.

“Oh thank goodness.” Blaine’s so ready for someone else to take a turn.

“Maybe we just say something nice,” Mercedes says. “Like the best thing.”

“Whoever says the kids is copping out,” Tina warns. “That’s like the person who says they’re thankful for family and friends at Thanksgiving. Really? Family _and_ friends? Everyone has to pick something, and you take the two most obvious ones?”

“Mercedes.” Kurt forces a smile and the corner of his lip twitches. “I reflected on what our marriage means to me to work out what I could say about it that was good. What would I miss? What worked? It wasn’t successful.”

Blaine holds his breath on Kurt’s behalf. Blaine knows better than to speak ill of the dead, even if the dead isn’t a person.

Tina shoots Blaine a panicked look as well.

“The good things – like commenting on _The Amazing Race_ together, and raising Jackie, and the nights we stayed up talking because we were too excited to spend time together to go to sleep, and watching your dream come true from the sidelines – the good things weren’t our marriage, they were us. None of those things have to end. What ends is not being honest with you. Or feeling like I don’t fit in my own life. Or driving you up the wall by refusing to open up. Good riddance to all of that. We’ll keep the good and throw out the bad, as long as that’s what you want. I’m glad to have you in my life, Ms. Mercedes Jones, and I hope that’s good enough, because I think the world of you, and that doesn’t end here.”

Kurt’s smile is full of nerves and hope.

“I’m not going to magically stop being mad as hell,” Mercedes confesses right back. “But I’d miss those things too.”

Blaine slips his hand into his pocket. He has his own promises to make.

“Back on that first night we talked about the end, you mentioned a friendship bracelet and then got sad about it. I hope this doesn’t make you sad again.” Out of his pocket Blaine unwraps a bundled handkerchief and over a dozen bracelets spill over the edge. “We’re supposed to be friends as long as it holds together. It’s not that long of a promise, so I made extras.”

He hopes so hard it’s good enough.

“I’ll make more when the supply runs low,” Blaine adds.

“Keep it up long enough and we’ll spend more on thread than we did on rings,” Tina cracks.

“Do what you want with that. It’s okay.”

She chooses a bracelet in shades of blue. She holds it tight between her fingers while tipping her hand to let her ring slide out of her palm. She lets it fall into the open ground without any of the attachment she previously showed. She looks right back up at him and says, “What, were we waiting for a ceremonial moment?”

“Now’s good,” Blaine and Mercedes agree in unison. They each follow. Kurt lets his drop last.

Blaine puts several knots in the bracelet. As a mother of three, Tina is no stranger to tacky homemade jewelry. “This friendship isn’t just for the summer. When it gets worn, we’ll fix it,” Blaine promises.

“Did you –? I didn’t make one,” Kurt whispers in an aside to Mercedes.

“Do you want one too, Mercedes?” Tina offers.

“I don’t know, I might have to be friends with Blaine that way,” Mercedes teases. She bumps Kurt’s shoulder. “I’ll keep what I’ve got. I’ll buy myself jewelry if I want it.”

“You’re wearing one too,” Tina tells Blaine. She pucks one from his stash for him.

“Do you want to make it yourself?” Blaine asks.

“Nah, you presumably like you too. Give me your hand.”

He holds out his wrist to her. Tina knots over and over. It’s light, but Blaine’s aware of its presence like he’s aware that his ring is missing. With time, he’ll adjust to this new weight.


	5. The Makeovers

Blaine quickly figures out that he can’t outlast his kids when it comes to staying up late for the sake of peace and quiet and privacy, especially now that they’re on a summer schedule. Instead, with some gentle coaxing, Kurt wakes up early enough for time that’s just for them. They meet in the parking lot of Hummel Tire & Lube after Blaine’s early morning gym classes. The air is cool before the heat of the day sets in.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Kurt gives him a kiss and a Lima Bean to-go cup of coffee. His eyelids are still heavy with sleep.

Blaine eagerly meets him halfway. He pushes to make the kiss more than just a hello. It’s the most amazing feeling to be together like this. This is a new way for them to be – out in the open, heart-eyes uncurtailed. Blaine broke the rules with his proposal and he’s ready to say goodbye to them for good.

“What are you so giddy about?” Kurt asks like he wants in on the secret.

“You and me and a coffee date.” Blaine smiles around his sip of coffee.

Little moments like this one are what he’s doing this for: this slice of time before Blaine goes home to check on the kids, who will be asleep for hours more still, and Blaine either works from the home office or takes a nap himself before heading back for the evening classes. If he checks in on them, they’ll grumble about it being too early for their dad’s brand of cheer, and it’ll almost feel like very little has changed between them. Blaine is flushed and clean and wide awake, endorphins from the workout still flooding his system, while he moves through their mostly sleepy little town. The world feels like it belongs to them. Moments like this are the perfect reminder that he’s _happy_.

Blaine holds out his hand while Kurt waits for a fuller answer. They lace their fingers together. “For one, coveralls have never looked so good, which is… How much am I allowed to flirt with you here?”

“Like on a scale?” It buys Kurt time to weigh the real answer Blaine knows will come if he waits for it. “A reasonable amount.”

“Hmm. I need you to define reasonability for me, please.”

“Of course you do.”

Kurt’s laugh makes Blaine laugh too. Blaine knows when he’s being quietly encouraged, at least by Kurt. He turns up the heat in his look until Kurt is compelled to answer.

“This is fine.” Kurt’s voice is breathy. Blaine has wonderful memories of that tone.

“Okay. And if I tell you you’re the picture perfect _definition_ of dirty cute…”

Kurt squirms, but in a good way. He puts a hand on Blaine’s chest. It’s a halfhearted buffer. “Jackie wants to stop by the shop and learn a few things. I think she’ll be better suited and far more satisfied following Mercedes’ career path instead, but she insisted and I’m not opposed to practical skills.”

“Not hard enough to embarrass you in front of a teenager, got it.” Blaine winks. He smacks a kiss to Kurt’s cheek. Blaine can behave himself for the sake of a relationship that matters so much to Kurt. He’ll find the line between not wanting to hide and not wanting to embarrass, and he’ll toe the right side of it.

Of course, trying to behave means his mind immediately settles on how good Kurt looks and how much he wishes doing more than flirting with him were possible right now. Kurt’s coveralls are something out of a scandalous daydream. Blaine is touched-starved. He can’t stop thinking about the possibility of fooling around in the backseat of one of the cars Kurt fixes up.

Sex is hardly the most important thing, but Blaine _misses_ it. They’re so good at it together. It seems unfair to know that and not act on it for the better part of a month now.

Blaine tries to distract himself. They can connect and show affection in other ways. “So. Now that we’ve got some closure with the funeral. Are you wedding planning already?”

Kurt laughs it off. “Apartment hunting. One step at a time.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t have a binder full of ideas tucked away.” Color coordinated, most likely, with options for all seasons. “You don’t have to pretend you’re not thinking about it with me.” If Blaine needs to stop thinking about sex, he can at least think about a wedding. Something as beautiful and elegant as Kurt, as over the top as Blaine, as sappy as the both of them. With Kurt in charge, it’s bound to be inspired.

There’s no laugher to Kurt’s response when pressed. “Blaine. Who would come?”

It’s a heartbreakingly plain question. It catches Blaine off guard. He didn’t think that far ahead. Grand weddings theoretically have a lot of guests. Blaine didn’t have a big first wedding like Kurt did, but he’s well aware the invitee list of family and family friends then would have been far lengthier than one now that he’s with Kurt.

“My friend Sam wants to meet you. That’s one.” Blaine aims for lighthearted. He falls tragically short.

Kurt gives a small smile in response.

Blaine wants to keep making promises even though some of it’s not up to him. The kids need time. Tina and Mercedes definitely do, and Blaine harbors a secret hope that one day they’ll be in a place where they want to be there for Kurt and Blaine, and maybe even stand for them. It all takes time and work. One day people will be happy for them. Minds change and new people will come into their lives. And even if the wedding is a small affair, it’s going to happen.

Blaine settles on, “Don’t give up on us, okay? Start planning. We’re going to get there.”

Blaine squeezes Kurt’s hand. He suspects the grand wedding binder still exists. He’ll see it when Kurt’s willing to share.

***

Arriving in Michigan for Mercedes’ upcoming sold-out performance doesn’t clear her mind of Ohio, or of the interview she gave about her separation and impending divorce. It replays over and over like a track on a broken record the whole way.

One line in particular repeats in Mercedes’ mind as if it wants to make sure it’s heard. It came out when pressed on how she feels about her marriage ending, breaking her own firm stance against ever considering divorce. Doesn’t she harbor any resentment over being mislead and used? Isn’t she mad? Doesn’t she feel betrayed? Each question is a new way to get at the same point – the hurt she tries to get past. They voice every painful thought she’s had since Kurt first told her.

_I forgive him._

The words came out of her so suddenly. Were they a revelation or a retort? She didn’t analyze them before, so she has to now.

Of all the practiced but not over-rehearsed lines – the one about the longevity and comfort of their friendship, strained though it’s been by secrets; the carefully planned pivot when personal matters got too hard to talk about the bullying, the threats, the hostility that would lead to waiting like Kurt did for the world to be a safer place for him; the organizations they intend to support to make things easier for the next generation – that moment about forgiveness is the one she knows made an impression on her interviewer. The whole tone of the interview shifted. The sadness and the drama peeled away to a message of hope and love.

She wants those words to be true. She wants that moment of clarity to last for her own sake as much as his. Her most ideal self can forgive. Forgiveness is closure. Moving on. She wants to let this be a turning point, because forgiveness isn’t a single moment; it’s an active, continued choice that’ll she’ll have to make in the face of every reminder of how much she’s been hurt. She wants to stop being heartbroken, and so far willing herself into feeling a certain way isn’t working, but she’s got enough willpower to keep trying.

“Wow, it feels good to be out of Ohio.” Tina stretches by her side. “I think this is as excited as anyone has ever been to be in Michigan. You and I are going to take this oven mitt of a state by storm.”

However much of Tina’s every word is bravado, it still consoles Mercedes.

With each step in Tina’s footsteps, Mercedes’ new resolve echoes in her mind. This tour can be a fresh start for her as much as it is for Tina. The past is just that.

Tina leads them into the drug store next to the hotel. She’s charged with entertaining herself while Mercedes prepares for her concert, and the drug store seemed as good of a solution as any.

“I’ll be quick,” Tina promises. Just as quickly, she’s distracted by a colorful bottle from the shelf. “Ooh. Home spa might be fun at some point. Yes or no? We have to make sure we’re doing something for you too. I know a 4 dollar scrub doesn’t quite compare with tagging along on a cross-country tour, but...”

“Keep me from getting too low and you’ve more than made up for it.” Mercedes has a purposefully upbeat set list to get through. Tina should get her into the right mindset, which is why she followed her to this drugstore to begin with.

“Okay. I’m on team keep Mercedes happy and healthy and making beautiful music.” Tina holds up both boxes of hair dye to show Mercedes. “Two or one?”

Mercedes squints. They’re the same box. “Why would you need two?”

“I have a lot of hair.” She tosses her loose waves to make her point.

“And this is clearly not the first time you’ve dyed it.”

“Excuse you, pop princess.”

Mercedes rolls her eyes with affection. “Because I don’t see the grays you say you’re behind on covering,” she fibs. “Just do what you usually do.”

That’s the wrong answer, judging by Tina’s face. “Blaine and I would split it.”

“Really?” Mercedes will stop being surprised at Tina and Blaine’s codependence eventually.

“We both have dark hair, or at least pretend like we still do, and his is short enough to not need a whole box, and I don’t want to not have enough. We used to make an event of it, holing up together in the bathroom with the shower radio on and the window open so we wouldn’t choke on the fumes. And then we’d rinse the dye off in the shower together and that alone makes it too awkward to even contemplate suggesting the rest, but we’re here starting fresh and I want to look my best, so I need to pick. Do you think I should save what I don’t use and send it to him? I wonder how long it keeps…”

“No.”

“Otherwise it just gets thrown out!” Tina threatens to tear up about hair dye. “I’ll just completely let myself go…”

“What about a highlight color?” Mercedes suggests to distract Tina from tears. They oscillate so quickly between fine and not. Anything can set it off, including a box of hair dye. Or two boxes. “You’ll use two boxes but they’ll both have a purpose and nothing goes to waste. Deal?”

Tina looks back up, slightly manic but the tears don’t fall. Her determination is suddenly back. “Yes!”

Mercedes assumes Tina will pick a slightly lighter shade of brown. Instead, the box Tina picks up is blue.

“Really? You sure?” Mercedes asks.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Mercedes mildly wonders if Tina frets as much about her as she does about Tina. Knowing Tina can take care of herself doesn’t stop Mercedes from wanting to too. She’ll send someone to check on Tina while she’s gone.

***

Tina has been left completely alone for over an hour now, and she’s satisfied to note that she’s managing just fine. There’s a king bed in her hotel room, which is infinitely wider than she’s used to, and she doesn’t even have to share. Everything is tidier than she’s used to too, and the hotel TV promises access to HBO. Even the view of the parking lot seems promising because it’s something new. Tina spreads her supplies across the immaculately clean hotel bathroom counter. There’s not a bottle of Proactiv or toothpaste tube squeezed from the middle in sight. She takes up all the space she can.

She’s completely alone, and she’s almost forgotten what it feels like. At home someone always wants her attention. She doesn’t think of herself as one of those moms who sacrifices everything, even her individual identity, in the face of how much she can give to her family, but space and time and quiet are definitely compromises she made.

She used to streak her hair with color, back before she stopped for her pregnancies and then fell out of habit. Back when she fell in love with punk rock. The woman on the cover of the box of blue dye makes her feel ancient. She doesn’t want to believe she’s too old for anything, and the streaks are tempting enough for her to power through. The process of it comes back to her. She remembers how to do this on her own. ~~~~

Tina has her hair partitioned into sections and piled on top of her head waiting for the dye to set when there’s a knock at the door.

The couple on the other side – a tall white woman and a similarly lissome Asian man – are too gorgeous for reality. They look like athletic apparel models meant to trick people into thinking the outdoors are great by illustrating how well being in them worked out for them. They both have biceps Tina envies. She works at a gym all day and she still can’t get those.

“Hey, Tina? Mercedes said we should find you here and invite you to dance rehearsal.” The man says. “We’re her dance captains.”

The blonde woman holds out her hand. “Mike Chang.” She deadpans.

“I guess that makes me Brittany S. Pierce.” Mike smiles and oh, no, he’s cute as well as hot.

“Representing the old-timers.” Brittany pumps her fist. “Wanna join?”

“You can’t be that old,” comes out after an indignant gasp at what Brittany just implied.

“Ancient by dance standards,” Mike corrects. He leans in the doorway with a smile. “Pretty much every dancer out there is retired by our age, but Mercedes keeps going, so we keep going with her.”

“We could use someone to talk to who gets my 80s references. The roadie kids don’t get my jokes about care bear stares.”

“Plus, rehearsal is cool. It’ll be a sneak peek of later.” Mike is either flirting or very friendly.

Dance is the closest thing Tina can get to calling an expertise. It’s a way of performing that she loves. Watching professionals is bittersweet and beautiful. She can only imagine how great the two of them must be.

“The company’s great.” Brittany gestures to the two of them. She winks.

“Are you _both_ flirting with me?” Tina asks. Cutting to the chase is more her style.

Brittany and Mike exchange a look.

“Yes?” Mike responds. “But Brittany’s married so I wouldn’t count on getting far there.”

“It’s just for fun and I don’t think you’ll mind,” Brittany says.

Tina doesn’t mind. She’s not interested, but it’s harmless and an ego-boost to be playfully welcomed. Tina gets it – she did theatre once upon a time, and no profession cultivates bigger flirts.

With their invitation she has the option to not be alone, but she finds she doesn’t mind. “Rain check? I’ve got to wash this out.”

“I haven’t heard ‘I gotta wash my hair’ as an excuse in a while,” Brittany teases without hard feelings.

“Next time it is.” Mike says. His smile lingers even as they retreat. Definitely flirting.

“And tell Mercedes not to worry about me when you see her. I’m doing just fine,” Tina calls after them.

Tina rinses the dye out all on her own in the quiet of her hotel room. Black and blue swirl down the drain. She stays until the water runs clean.

She brushes her hair out in front of the full-length mirror. The streaks become more and more prominent as they dry. The kids and Blaine are still never far from her mind. She’ll text the results of this experiment when she’s ready to share. Once she adjusts to it herself.

She aimed for youthfulness in dying her hair. The style from 20 years ago highlight the difference those years have made for her. She doesn’t look like she used to. It’s not exactly like going back to who she was before them. Instead, she sees a pretty badass-looking mom staring back at her.

She sticks out her tongue at her reflection. Perfect.

***

Kurt doesn’t pick up a copy of the magazine that holds Mercedes’ interview. He doesn’t check it out online. All he needs to know right now is that it exists. Presumably the readership for a gay magazine is low in Lima, Ohio, but Mercedes’ local-celebrity status means other news outlets will pick up the story. It’s only a matter of when. Kurt assumes quickly.

Kurt moves decisively through his morning routine with that in mind. If he’s going back out into the world, he has to be ready. He pauses when it’s time to get dressed. Inside the packed boxes strewn across the guest bedroom he claimed as his own are all the trappings that beg for him not to be noticed. So many clothes that just exist to be worn, not to make a statement. He has such a distasteful amount of plaid. How does he have so much flannel? This life really hasn’t been his.

He marches the pile down in a bag for Goodwill.

“Where are you taking me?” Jackie asks when she sees him getting ready to go.

Kurt stops in his tracks at the playful demand to be involved.

“Thrift store hopping, if you’re coming along. Are you coming along?” Kurt pictured doing this alone. She used to always want to be wherever he was, from the time she was old enough to control her own mobility, but then she avoided coming home once he came out and he assumed she would keep avoiding him once there. Instead, she’s been at the shop, even with her nose wrinkled in disgust each time her hands get dirty, and settling in by his side at home like the little girl who used to find him so fascinating.

He really, really doesn’t want to lose that.

Jackie peeks inside Kurt’s bag of clothes. “Are we doing a makeover?”

“A style update,” Kurt corrects. Makeover sounds like the game they used to play where she would mix and match all the costumes Kurt made her to try out combinations like kitten drum major or flapper veterinarian in space.

“Sure, Sandra Dee. Can I pierce your ears?”

“Absolutely not. I’m hiding the potatoes and the sewing needles.” Kurt laughs in relief. She hasn’t given up on spending time with her dad like he keeps expecting she will. “This is really how you want to spend your day?”

“Well, my ideal day also involves cupcakes, but I’m always down for a makeover. I wanna see what’s under the cocoon.”

Not for the first time in Jackie’s life, Kurt doesn’t know what to do for her. This isn’t how she’s supposed to react. It’s too easy. It’s too much like it used to be. Kurt expects sadness. He expects teenaged rebellion. He expects snark, because she comes by that honestly. Instead…

“What are we looking for?” Jackie flips through the racks by his side. She gives each article of clothing in Goodwill careful consideration despite not knowing what she’s considering it for.

“Something itching to become something else.”

Jackie holds up a tweed blazer from the rack. “I think this one’s just itching.”

Kurt runs his fingers over each non-itchy option. He’s denied himself good fashion for too long.

He creates a new pile that’s the opposite of the one he donated. He plucks out pieces that are fitted and eclectic and elevated, full of patterns and colors. So, so much color. He welcomes in asymmetry. He adds in brooches and ascots. With only a moment’s hesitation, he ignores the sign delineating the women’s section from the men in pursuit of fashion. His only plan is to make everything feel like it’s _his_ , with whatever tailoring and mending necessary.

“I see you’re aiming for subtlety,” Jackie jokes with a nod toward Kurt’s flamboyant selections. It’s affectionate. Teenagers embarrass easily, although Kurt’s less so, and right now she mostly looks amused. “It suits you.”

“I think so too.” He’ll be more fantastic than Ohio will be able to stand. He’s done with draping himself in things that don’t make him happy.

Jackie smiles as she adds a few more women’s sweaters in the same vein to his pile like this is a typical father-daughter outing for them while Mercedes is away on tour. He’s so impressed with her. It’s a weird situation for a teenager to come home to her parents holding a funeral for their marriage, followed shortly by her father embracing being more flamboyantly gay. Kurt doesn’t know why she’s adapting so well, but it’s not likely to stay this way. Soon enough her parents’ divorce will hit her like he assumed it already did. In the meantime, she wants to keep spending time with him like nothing’s different between them, so he’ll keep watching her for signs that indicate otherwise and hoping for the best.

A camera flash turns Kurt’s attention back to the present.

“Well, that won’t do.” Jackie turns the picture toward him to show him his startled expression. She tuts. “Smile with your eyes, Dad. Or for reals. I’ll take that too. Honestly, I know you know how to take selfies, and it’s not like it’s harder to let someone else take them.”

“What’s the picture for?”

“I’m texting Mom. Can’t let her worry about either of us and she’s always begging for more pictures. This way she gets to be involved too.”

Kurt didn’t picture his makeover going this way. He assumed he’d be alone. He assumed no one else would want to be involved. It turns out he really didn’t know what to expect.

“Good idea,” Kurt says. The thoughtfulness she gets from Mercedes. "Thank you."

“Now vogue!”

Kurt does. Screw being a stereotype – he’s being who he wants to be.


	6. Checking In

It’s not quite like reality on tour. Tina looks everywhere she can on even the most boring of roads, stretching out to all the places she’s never been. Even though the interstate highways and the trees alongside them look the same from Ohio to Michigan to Pennsylvania to New Jersey, she takes it all in. It’s bound to look different soon enough.

On stage, Brittany and Mike refresh their memories of their routine. Tina has the rest of the arena mostly to herself. In the folding seat she claims, she’s close enough to observe without being in the way. They’re electric. If she were a casual observer, she wouldn’t think about their age at all. Knowing makes her even more impressed. They aren’t slowed down. They move with confidence and grace Tina can only hope to emulate.

As captivating as the dancers are, and as new as the surroundings are to her, Tina’s focus drifts to her kids, her soon to be ex-husband, and the life she left behind. She wants to be here. It’s not that simple. She’s never been away from them for so long, and worrying about them isn’t limited to close-range. Their lives don’t go on hold while she and Blaine sort this out. There are mundane days, dinners together, times when they forget that everything has changed. Struggling to adjust takes place between all those moments, and frustrated outbursts don’t stop them from coming back together. Her biggest hope is that they’re collectively moving toward something better.

Brittany and Mike are oblivious to Tina’s wondering. She can’t hear them and they can’t hear her. She pulls out her phone.

Blaine is too upbeat to be trusted with telling the whole truth – everything is ‘fine’ with him at a bare minimum – and Tina has talked with each of the kids too much to call them directly again so soon. She calls Sam.

“I promise they’re fine,” Sam says before she even asks. “It matters a lot to them that you’re happy. And that you haven’t forgot about them. I think the last two dozen calls have proven that you still care.”

“How are they coping, really? Don’t just tell me what I want to hear – I have Blaine for that.”

“You know how hard Blaine tries when he’s worried someone won’t like him anymore? Multiply that by three, and then add another level of intensity for loving them more than most people, and then one more for effectively becoming a single parent.”

“Oh no.” Blaine’s “please love me” eyes have been in both dreams and nightmares.

“It’s okay. He’s trying his hardest _not_ to try his hardest since stability is important according to one of the 50 million parenting blogs he’s now on, so mostly they’re extremely well-fed, and have every opportunity to talk about their feelings they could want, and Blaine’s face might get stuck in an eternally hopeful expression.”

“Seriously, Sam.”

“Seriously. We’ve been singing it out a lot. It’s good. It’s healthy. Maybe it’ll even be funny one day. Emma and some of her kids stopped by too. So that’s one more person who’s, like, a professional they can go to. We’re weaving the support network together thread by thread.”

She exhales. Sam is a goofball 99% of the time, but she trusts him when it comes to her kids. All of that sounds good.

“They’re loving the tour pictures, so keep those coming. The kids aren’t the only ones living vicariously through you. I’m living for your Facebook posts.” Sam says. “Can I come visit? Am I too old to be a groupie?”

“Did Blaine not establish that’s weird?” Not that she needs a middleman in relationships, but Sam started it by involving Blaine first and her not at all.

“You should introduce me.”

“To Mercedes? You’ve already met.” Tina may have been tipsy, but she remembers Sam coming to get her and Blaine, and how he tripped over his tongue at the sight of Mercedes. Most people would be too embarrassed to want to repeat that experience.

“But you should talk me up,” Sam presses in a hopeful tone.

Tina thinks back to a conversation with Blaine about Sam having a crush that mysteriously sprung up around the time they announced their divorce. “Oh thank god.”

“For something in particular?”

“You’re not into me.”

“Nope. Was that a concern?”

“It’s not anymore.” What a relief. As much as Tina would like to move on, moving on to her husband’s best friend is just tacky.

“Okay then.” Sam doesn’t press any further.

“Your whole thing with Mercedes that makes way more sense… She’s not going to be interested. It’s too soon to move on,” Tina says like she hasn’t had thoughts of a particular flirty dancer she watches with too much interest.

“Blaine and Kurt did.”

“And that was a dick move.” It’s still a punch to the stomach to hear it put that way. They moved on. She’s struggling to catch up.

“Wait, from them or me?” Sam sounds hurt.

“Both.”

“I went through a divorce once too,” Sam says. Which is true. Tina forgets because it happened long before Sam was virtually adopted by her kids. “I remember that it sucks. It’s not like there’s a certain point where it stops sucking.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Wait if it helps, but sometimes it’s not the thing that does,” Sam says anyway. “Actually moving on does. You don’t have to be hung up as long as I was.”

“That’s something to hope for.” Tina sighs. Now, to kindly tell Sam he hasn’t a chance with Mercedes. Tina hardly knows how she got so lucky to get Mercedes’ friendship. Tina likes Sam plenty - he’s a giant dork who’s great with kids, and he’s objectively good looking even if he doesn’t appeal to her in that way. He’s probably a great guy for a normal person to date. Or a weird person. Just not a minor celebrity-type person who is already doing multiple favors for Tina. Tina’s not wasting a favor of Sam’s crush.

But he’s being kind to her family. He’s practically part of it now. Is letting him have misplaced hope such a bad thing? Especially if that hope ends up benefitting Tina?

“I’ll mention you if you come up naturally in conversation, okay?”

“Awesome. I’ll be worth mentioning!”

And now the kids will have to contend with both Blaine and Sam trying their hardest. But they’ll be okay.

Tina looks back at the dancers. They’re on a new song now. The only possible way to pull focus from Mercedes is with dancers who move like that. If Tina were to make ill-conceived attempts at getting back in the dating scene, it wouldn’t be with Sam. She’s not even officially divorced yet, but that just makes it more fair. She deserves a hand in desecrating their marriage too.

She hasn’t has a consequence-free hookup since college. It used to be fun. She’s tempted to do it just because she can. Just to prove to herself that it’s still possible to be attractive to someone other than Blaine, who turned out to be less into her than previously advertised.

It’s an idle thought and nothing more. Logistically, practically, it isn’t great. She’d like to keep hanging out with Mercedes, which rules out ruining everything. She lets her mind wander knowing it won’t do any harm to look. ~~~~

***

“I’m coming apartment hunting with you,” Jackie announces. “You were doing it all wrong.”

Kurt wipes the grease off his hands. His dad used to say he only came by the shop when he wanted something. Now he always wants something and he’s always here. Jackie is the same way of late. She bounds out of his office waving a pad of paper at him. He can guess it’s the written out list of apartment addresses he left on his office desk. Jackie has both Kurt’s and Mercedes’ inclination to snoop.

Kurt takes the pad from her. Her own notes are in the margins.

“Should I be worried about you?” Kurt asks. He angles the pad to see it clearly without his glasses. She comes by her flair for the dramatic honestly – it’s not that. It’s the relative lack of drama, actually. There’s probably some child psychologist’s term for why she’s forcefully chipper in spite of how literally everything else has changed. It’s possibly normal for her to act like this, if it’s possible for anyone to say what normal is. Kurt wouldn’t know, given how opposed he’s been to seeing a therapist himself. Still, he can’t help feeling something is wrong. The nagging thought has been growing louder. “We can talk to someone.”

“I’m talking to _you._ ” Jackie tuts her exasperation. “And I’m saying you’re doing this wrong.”

He doesn’t need much - somewhere close to the shop, available soon. What matters most is a place to call home. He’s a guest in his old home now, and one who has overstayed. He’s ready to go.

Like his makeover, Kurt pictured going apartment hunting alone. Starting his life over seems like a solitary activity.

Jackie stabs at the pad. “This one is too far away. This one only has studios. This one has too many stairs for Grandpa to visit. Speaking of, you could just go live with him for a while.”

“Hard pass.”

“Are you fighting?”

“No.” Fighting is too simple. They’re not simple men. “I’m trying to talk about you right now.”

Jackie steamrolls ahead with what she’d like to talk about instead. “They all need more than one bedroom. It’s 2015, Dad. You can be gay _and_ have a family.”

“It’s okay to be sad.” Kurt reassures, and now they’re officially talking past each other. “Or to need time to adjust. It’s a lot to process. You don’t have to pretend otherwise. I can take it. It’s sweet that you want to be supportive, but it’s my job to take care of you.” He’s not giving that job up. ~~~~

“I think I knew.” Jackie blurts. She looks like she startles herself almost as well as she startles Kurt. “I don’t mean that in the condescending way where I look back and lie to myself about my powers of observation. I suspected. I know _you_. I knew something wasn’t right for you. We’re close, Dad. You don’t have the same walls with me. I figured you didn’t know yourself and it wasn’t for me to say. But I told myself if – _when_ – I would be cool. I’m trying to be cool. Let me have that.”

“I already think you’re the coolest,” Kurt says sincerely. When in doubt, say what’s true. He processes the rest. Jackie knew. Who knows for how long. He could have told her so much sooner. _Years_ sooner, possibly. What is he supposed to do with that?

Suddenly so much makes sense. It explains why she took a while to come home but has been unfailingly by his side since. It clears the lens through which he’s viewed his entire time as a parent, really. She was waiting for him to be ready, not the other way around.

Jackie’s voice wobbles for the first time Kurt’s heard since he first gave Mercedes permission to tell her. “I miss Mom. That’s the hard part. That doesn’t even make sense – she’s always busy and she still makes time for me. But it’s different. I don’t know why. I figured you two’d break up once I left. Hell, that’s why I agreed to go to that pompous boarding school where you wouldn’t have to worry about me. I gave you your space in case you were waiting for my sake.”

“It’s a great school.” It’s not helpful. He doesn’t know what else to say. He didn’t mean to make her an accomplice in his sham marriage. He didn’t expect a boarding school with an excellent no bullying policy to be anywhere near the top of her list of complaints.

“It’s what _you_ want.” She counters. “That’s not what I want to fight about right now. You need more than one room if you want anyone to visit you. Don’t you want a place people can visit? Don’t you want me around?”

Kurt finally gets why she’s pushing so hard. He worried his family might not want him around anymore and forgot she might worry he didn’t want her either. With Mercedes on tour, Kurt leaving means she’d be alone.

“If you’ll use it, there’ll be a room for you. You can go wherever I do. I’m not starting my fabulous new life without you,” Kurt promises.

Jackie’s features flood with relief. “Okay. Good.”

Kurt hopes his smile is reassuring as he gives the notepad list of apartments back to her. “Let’s lock up at the garage and search for somewhere new together.”

***

Mercedes is actually not that into spa nights anymore. She has professionals who fuss over her makeup and who are just as good at helping her take it off. Enough time is spent caring about her appearance. It's a hazard of her career. But Tina wants to do something for her and doesn't listen to Mercedes’ insistence that her presence is enough. She arrives with the facial scrub acquired from the drugstore and the promise of a fun time. Mercedes gets company out of it and a way to wind down. Apply gunk. Let it sit. Laugh at themselves. Rinse. It's a simple option to let her have.

“I can’t talk too much,” Mercedes warns her. Vocal rest doesn’t make her great company. She usually has to be alone because friends are too tempting, but she can’t turn her guest and current source of her emotional wellbeing away. ~~~~

“I’ll cover enough talking for both of us.” Tina promises. She makes herself at home in Mercedes’ hotel room. She hands Mercedes a mug of tea and honey and spreads out across the counter, claiming a towel for each of them with that $4 facial between them.

Mercedes sips at her tea while they lounge on Mercedes’ bed and let the masks set. The tea is sweet enough to give a dentist heart palpitations. It’s not how Mercedes would choose to make it for herself. She smiles into the rim.

“So Mike is cute. Have you ever been tempted?” Tina asks.

Mercedes laughs at her. She laughs too much when Tina is around. Even with vocal rest, it’s hard to consider that a bad thing. “Not once did it cross my mind. That’s all you.”

“I’m not saying I have wild plans for him. Or that he would agree to those plans. It’s just a thought.” Tina’s little hum as she contemplates it further betrays her.

“That thought is all yours.”

“What are _your_ thoughts?” Tina says it like it’s meant to scandalize. Like she expects secrets in return. She fully embraces the middle school sleepover feel of their time together. Gossip is a time-honored tradition at such events. 

Mercedes has no secrets. She has no desire for secrets. The divorce paperwork isn’t even final yet. The thought of starting from scratch is even more exhausting than her show.

She saves her voice for when she needs it. It’s a great excuse to not answer.

“When you’re ready to date again, can we set you up with everyone on my Three for Free list?” Tina asks. She needs no encouragement to keep pushing. “Let me have this through you. It’s the closest I can get.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard it!”

“You want to tell me and _then_ I say no?” Mercedes offers. She can rest her voice while Tina takes her turn. She expects a lot from her voice. Rest is key. ~~~~

“Well, my long-standing top choice was Ricky Martin, but I had to take him off for practical reasons.”

“You factor practicality into your list?” Mercedes can’t help the playful prodding.

“That’s part of the fun – the idea that it could actually happen! You have to believe it could happen, even if the chance is one in a billion.”

“So far, the common denomination between yours, mine, and your fantasy is pretty damn gay.”

Tina huffs. “Who would you pick, then?”

“Probably someone pretty damn gay.” Mercedes laughs. A joke is an easy answer. Celebrity status is the last complication her romantic entanglements need. It hardly sets up a low-pressure situation where she can calmly and rationally sort out what’s best for her. Of course, she’s a celebrity now too, so the only way to take celebrity out of the equation is to remove herself.

“You’re not getting off that easy! That’s not an answer!”

Something about the sleepover feeling makes Mercedes lean closer and ask, “Do you think sex is better with a guy who isn’t gay?”

Tina turns, ready for gossip. “Have you slept exclusively with gay guys?”

“Kurt. We waited.” Mercedes frowns. “ _I_ waited. He said he did.” She hates she can’t trust her own memories anymore. In Mercedes’ mind, Kurt was like Tim Gunn – fabulous and celibate. Only one of those turned out to be true.

Tina moves to stand. “We can fix this!”

Mercedes pulls her back down. “Do not.”

“I was going to pick a good one for you!”

“Horrifying.” Mercedes shudders to prove it.

“It’s official: I’m expanding my duties from the Mercedes Jones Health and Happiness team to the Get Mercedes Jones Laid team.”

“Nope.” In Mercedes’ experience, sex isn’t worth the effort. She had even less interest after giving birth. Kurt certainly never offered to try again either. They just let it go and were both happier for it.

She lets out a frustrated huff. She thought she came to terms with it. With not wanting it with anybody. With likely never having sex again. Now it’s on her mind, all over again. She’s once again wondering if it’s something she _could_ want. Starting her life over really throws a wrench in everything she thought was already settled. She can’t imagine getting to a point where it seems like a good idea again, and yet she still wonders.

“That’s all you have to say? ‘Nope’?”

“I can’t talk about this.”

“Am I embarrassing you?” they know each other well enough now that Tina seems delighted by the prospect.

“My _voice_ ,” Mercedes protests.

“Do you want me to be your voice?”

Mercedes gives her a look.

“See, right now you’re thinking ‘how would you possibly do that, Tina?’ I got you figured out.”

Mercedes’ phone buzzes with a call from Kurt. Mercedes reaches for it.

“Offer stands,” Tina says.

“Goodnight, Tina.” Mercedes accepts the call and waves as Tina takes the hint to leave.

Tina hugs her first. “I know it’s your choice. Don’t let me or anyone else make you feel differently.” She closes the door behind her without another word.

“What’s wrong?” Mercedes asks into the receiver.

“Nothing at all. Everything’s great,” Kurt says. He even sounds believable.

“But you’re calling.” The last call while she was on tour was his request that she come home so he could come out. No bombshells that big are left in the realm of possibility.

“I’m calling because we’re friends and I hope you’re doing okay,” Kurt says gently. “How’s tour?”

“I’m not supposed to talk much since I sing so hard.” It’s always been part of the reason not to mind too much with calling.

“Ah, right.”

“You can talk at me?” Mercedes doesn’t want Kurt’s moment of outreach to end so soon. If he wants to talk, she wants to let him. It’s too rare to let the opportunity go.

“Hold on,” Kurt says. “I have an idea. Let me go find someone under 30.”

Kurt finds Jackie, who chatters enthusiastically at Mercedes while she sets things up, and Mercedes finds someone on her tech team and 20 minutes later they both have Skype accounts so Kurt can talk and Mercedes can type back if she has something she has to say. It’s imperfect but they make it work. Kurt freely strings together more words than she can usually pull out. He tells her about the place he’s getting not too far from what used to be theirs. It’s close and cozy but with room for guests. He’s not supposed to paint the walls but he’s too creative to feel limited by that. He updates her on Jackie and how much he adores every moment with her and how much he’s missed her, how much he’s going to miss her again come fall. With one apology for bringing it up and then minimal stuttering he tells Mercedes about something cute Blaine did that’s a little lost to her but sweet anyway.

Mercedes closes her eyes. She curls her fingers around her tea. Talking like this reminds her of the good moments in their marriage when they wanted to spend time enjoying each other’s company. Kurt’s voice lulls her down from the high of performing into a place of rest.

***

Kurt’s new apartment is spartan by circumstance rather than design choice. For now, it’s blank white walls and possibilities. Finally, finally they have a place that’s meant to hold them both. What that means for the future is hazy – is this permanent or a temporary resting place, will Blaine be here with Kurt or divided between here and his other home for longer still – they’ll figure out with time. It’s a cheap little starter apartment not unlike the one Blaine had following college. Blaine is ready to start.

Well, almost ready. They neglect the unpacking and organizing they need to do, as well as figuring out the future. It all waits. Past the unpacked boxes and closet doors ajar and the space they’ll find a way to fill stands the bed they set up before anything else. They spend their time rumpled together, both partially undone, as close as they can be.

“I think this is my new favorite place,” Blaine says. Kurt’s room. Kurt’s bed. A world with Kurt in it. Blaine fits right into it. He flexes tired muscles against sheets that are theirs. The comforter they didn’t bother to move tangles around their ankles. He stretches his toes as far as he can. He’s not sleepy so much as at peace.

Kurt hazards a completely besotted look up from his spot nestled against Blaine’s chest. Blaine doesn’t mind the weight. Kurt’s so much less guarded than Blaine has seen him lately. His fingers play with buttons he might eventually right.

“I want gay art,” Blaine announces. “I want something really gay.”

“What does that mean?” “By ‘gay’ do you mean something…naughty?” Kurt is 45 years old and yet there’s a blush in his voice. “Or like a Keith Haring print and I’m embarrassing myself?”

“You’re cute,” Blaine promises with a kiss to Kurt’s nose.

“You could be art. Oh my god.” Kurt embarrasses himself enough to hide against Blaine before arching back to look Blaine straight in the eye. “Tell me about the art you want, Blaine.”

Blaine wants to be married to this adorable dork. He hasn’t touched the subject of their wedding ever since Kurt confessed his concern that no one will want to come. He’ll leave that topic alone for Kurt to come back to on his own.

“I didn’t mean tawdry, necessarily.” Blaine doesn’t want erotica on his walls. He still cares what other people think, and while he personally has no qualms about tasteful nudity, it’s not on-brand. “I don’t really know. I want something I’ve been afraid of.”

Specifics are fuzzy, but he can certainly remember feeling drawn and quickly looking away, always afraid of being caught. Something he’s forced himself to let his gaze slide over for fear of anyone else taking notice. He doesn’t look away any longer. They’re starting fresh in this new apartment that can be comfortable and theirs in a way they haven’t had before. They’ll be fully themselves. Things should feel different.

Kurt’s nimble fingers reclose buttons he just as diligently pulled apart not too long ago. He kisses Blaine when he’s put back together again. “We can make that happen.”

The next time Blaine comes back to their apartment, Kurt has put the full force of his decorating-on-a-budget skills into effect. He lets Blaine take in the changes with a wordless bounce of excitement.

“What’s this?” Blaine asks.

Kurt has hung vintage prints of LGBT couples spanning decades, races, and regions throughout the apartment. Every last one of them has the couple happy together. It’s rare and beautiful to see. They tug at Blaine’s sentimental heart. Somehow, they found each other like Blaine found Kurt – against all odds. Blaine silently takes in every last one of the pictures of couples who came before them. Blaine wonders what their stories are. He hopes they got the happy ending he has planned for himself.

“You said you wanted gay, which, ta-da, and I know you’re into photography, so…” Kurt shrugs to stop his babbles. He sounds nervous. As if Blaine hasn’t loved everything he’s ever done.

“It’s not quite done.” Kurt nods toward the blank canvas right at the focal point of the room.

“I gathered.”

“It’s going to take a while. The last one doesn’t exist yet,” Kurt continues to babble. “I was thinking a _modern_ wedding picture. Ours. You and I are going there. It has to wait until it happens, which I don’t think will be right away because weddings take time and I want to have the people there we want, and then I think it’s going to be my favorite. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

Blaine nods. He kisses Kurt to seal it. It doesn’t have to be right away. Until then, the blank canvas holds as much promise as the previously blank walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to mentally decorate Kurt and Blaine's new apartment, check out these resources:  
> http://fyeahqueervintage.tumblr.com/  
> http://vintagequeerwomen.tumblr.com/


	7. Telephone

Between morning and evening classes, Blaine works from the home office and waits to see which of his kids will wake first. Summer schedules combined with cheating on and then divorcing their mother makes their willingness to spend time with him hard to predict. They teeter toward forgiveness and/or acceptance and then dance away, all on different timelines. Not hovering is so hard. Same with not forcing a fix before it’s time. Patience is not _his_ virtue.

Every morning Blaine hopes for a good day where they’re almost how they were. Soon the kids will be back in school and he’ll be…who knows where. To make that decision he needs Tina. She’s been gone longer than either of them expected, but then he also doesn’t know what they’ll do when she gets back. Either way, they’re running out of time to enjoy summer like they used to, and so many moments feel wasted.

He’s up at the sound of footprints in the hall, ready in an instant for someone to call on him.

Wesley yawns, looking half asleep still. “Guilty over something?”

“Morning!” Blaine aims for cheerful but not overeager enough to scare everyone away.

“You look guilty,” Wesley repeats as he wipes away sleep. It’s an idle comment, but one that expects an explanation.

Blaine’s nose wrinkles. He didn’t do anything wrong – the world of scandalous things he could do with the world wide web at his fingertips is currently unexplored. He’s always guilty anyway. He sounds more defensive than he should when he truthfully says, “I’m doing payroll.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Getting a rise out of their parents has long been a Cohen-Chang favorite. Usually the kids have to work harder to succeed.

Blaine’s guilt doesn’t go away when Wesley pads off in search of a breakfast cereal his sisters haven’t depleted. Blaine resists the urge to follow him with an offer to make breakfast. He’s gone overboard on that already. He’s supposed to maintain consistency and routines where he can. Winning over their affection with breakfast foods breaks from routine.

Clattering from the kitchen confirms Wesley has it handled.

The computer screen has gone dark by the time Blaine returns his attention back to it. It reflects an outline of his features back at him. Does he wear his guilt in his expression? Is it part of how he holds himself now? Or is it what they see when they look at him no matter what he does?

Blaine checks on the girls next. He knocks on the door to the room they share.

“Good morning!” Blaine calls through the door.

A muffled “Dad, it’s too early for this!” – Winnie – is his response.

“Come say hi when you’re awake?” He frames it as a question. It’s an invitation.

He doesn’t hear a response. Blaine rests his forehead against the frame. He waits. The space is theirs, and he will absolutely respect that. He’ll wait for the door to open.

And so the day continues. Offer but don’t push. Check in but give them space but be emotionally available. Read more parenting blogs. Check in _again_ just in case. Debate the line between proactive and pushy. Undoubtedly cross that line and then retreat. Pretend that everything is normal.

Blaine knew it would be hard when he proposed to Kurt on that fateful day in Quiznos, but he didn’t picture the not-so-hard-but-still-not-perfect moments stretching on like this and consuming his days. They’re far from a worst-case scenario but Blaine can’t help the gnaw of unhappiness in his gut. (Challenges are always temporary, love wins in the end, he raised three great kids who have always loved him. He logically knows all these things to be true.) The worst is all in his head. It’s not like they’ve given up speaking to him (yet). It’s not like there aren’t moments when they forget anything has changed. But there’s more distance than he’s used to and he’s worried it’ll grow.

He wears a tread on the stairs from all the aborted trips to check in _again_.

His fretting hardly matters - he remains largely ignored until it’s time to go back to the gym again for afternoon classes.

***

It turns out Tina is still willing to drop everything for Blaine. She has 20 years of automatic responses to shake off, and they don’t shake easily. A hint of something possible with Mike dances through her thoughts as she spends more time with him and Brittany, and then Blaine asks to talk and she makes her excuses to retreat somewhere alone.

“Hello?” ~~~~

Blaine appears on Tina’s phone screen and it doesn’t hurt as much as it could to see him. It still stings. She misses her family with the distance between them, but she misses what they used to have even when he’s right in front of her.

“Hey!” Blaine always sounds so happy to see her, which is better than the alternative and still somehow unfair. “How’s seeing the world?”

“We’re in _Delaware_.” It’s hardly the grandest of places, but it’s still new to her. With each new stop she ticks off places she’s never been.

“So…? Go on.” He wears that goofy grin on purpose. The fact that Delaware isn’t grand doesn’t abate his excitement for her either.

“How’s home?”

That’s when it slips. “Um…I…Fine. You know. We’re…trying. Have you talked to the kids?”

He doesn’t give a time frame, which makes it harder to answer. “Is there something new going on?”

“Same old same as far as I know.” Blaine pauses for a beat. “I’m not sure what to do.”

It’s an open invitation for her to butt in. Tina takes it. “What’s wrong?”

“The kids are fine,” Blaine reassures.

“What’s wrong with _you_?” She studies his face for an answer. FaceTime is an imperfect way to hold a conversation. He moves off-center when he gestures too much, and he pixelates when he moves too fast for the video to keep up. They both have to talk louder to be heard. For a moment Tina thinks the video freezes, but it’s Blaine himself struggling to express a feeling that isn’t positive.

“It doesn’t end,” Blaine mumbles. “We’re never going to be done with this.”

“Did something happen?” Tina asks again. He’s so open about the things that bring him joy, but getting Blaine to talk about anything hard usually takes multiple tries.

Instead of responding, Blaine hesitates like he doesn’t know the answer. “No,” he decides.

All that cheer and optimism has to deplete at some point. It’s exhausting to maintain. Blaine always replenishes. Tina waits.

“I start each day thinking, ‘maybe this will be the one where I know everything will be okay.’ I don’t know why. I wanted that feeling 18 years ago when Wesley was red and screaming his tiny lungs out and I couldn’t seem to hold him right, and it still hasn’t come yet.”

Tina cracks a smile. She remembers Blaine confessing that the first time all those years ago when they were new to being parents and suddenly hopeless. They thought they were so prepared and realized quickly how much more than they had to learn. “I don’t think it’s happening.”

“I know. It’s fine. Things could be so much worse between us…”

“A comforting thought,” Tina interrupts wryly.

“It doesn’t even… it’s nothing. It’s just bothering me today, and it’s nothing. I’m being ridiculous.”

Tina blows a kiss rather than respond.

“My kids used to _love_ me. I couldn’t get a second of peace if I wanted one. And now they don’t even want to be around me.”

Tina fights against the urge to say it’ll be okay. It’ll sound too hollow. She settles with another cliché: “Give it time.”

“I know, I know.”

“Is there more going on? What’s the renewed sense of urgency?”

“Summer is ending,” Blaine says like that’s an explanation. “You’re coming home eventually – not to rush you, but you are. Even if you stay until the end, the tour doesn’t have that many stops left. And then I’m not going to be the only option they have. What if they want to live with you and never see me again?”

“Live where?” Tina snorts. It’s not a decision they’ve made. They haven’t been equipped to make it. Her stomach knots each time she remembers they’ll have to decide. Planning for the future works so much better when the future seems like the predictable thing it used to be. It used to be based on the assumption that her marriage was forever. The house would be theirs until they were old. Nothing would ever have to change.”

“You’re not disappearing,” Tina says. “Blaine. _I_ want to see you again. They’re going to too. You’re going to be around. The kids are too much work for any other alternative, and they _do_ love you. Now stop making me do your emotional labor.”

“Sorry.” Blaine composes himself. A little of the worry seems to fade for now. “What can I do for you?”

When they were together, she’d ask for cookie dough, or a load of laundry, or an hour to herself to read. She’s too far for bribes, and she has time to herself now.

“Help me get over you,” is what comes out.

“Well, this is terribly unattractive,” Blaine says after a beat, with a gesture to red rimmed eyes, “So I’m doing what I can.”

Like she hasn’t seen him in far more compromising situations. Once upon a time, swooning at the sight of him was a sign of how well they were doing almost 20 years into a marriage. Now she wishes stopping were as easy as seeing him an unflattering light.

“Remember when I used to play with the blender first thing in the morning to make smoothies? Ugh. The worst.”

“ _That’s_ the annoying habit you choose?”

Blaine shrugs and grins cutely, which is what always got him out of it.

“It was pretty annoying,” Tina admits. “No one should be that loud that early in the morning. Put a better, quieter blender on your wedding registry.”

“So you can keep the original as a token of how much I annoy you?”

Tina laughs. “I won’t take it with me unless I’m stopping at the dumpster first.”

She doesn’t mean to bring it up. She realizes after she says it.

“I assumed you’d want the house,” Blaine responds carefully, each word cautiously selected.

“I assumed you would.”

“Oh. Am I still right though?”

“I don’t know where to put me.” She pictures him at the house because that’s where he is now and she’s the one who’s gone. “We don’t have to decide now.”

“Will it help though?”

“Yeah. Probably both of us.” They both need a place to picture their futures in, now that they know it’s not the same as they used to imagine.

Kurt has his apartment now. Maybe it makes sense for Blaine to go there. More sense than it makes for four separate homes between the four of them, at least. Despite Blaine’s worries, he’ll still see the kids if he doesn’t live with them. She should take the house, practically, so she has a place to go when this is over.

Why is she suddenly filled with dread, then?

They’ve had their current home since Wendi was a baby. But it doesn’t feel like a place that belongs to Tina anymore. Thinking of home as the place she shares with Blaine makes it feel like she has no home at all. Waves of homesickness have come and gone but she always settles into that fact. There’s not space there for them both to move on. Could she give it up? But if she lets Blaine have it, it’s not really gone, just not hers.

She looks at Blaine’s familiar “love me” expression he doesn’t even know he’s making. He’ll accept whatever choice she makes.

“I wish it were obvious,” Tina says. If she knew how to be over him, she already would be. If she knew where she wanted to live, she would be there now. She toys with the friendship bracelet Blaine gave her. A few strands are fraying, curling away from the rest of the knotwork. Part of getting over him has to be moving on.

“How are you holding up?” Blaine indicates toward the bracelet.

“Better if I stop picking at it.” Tina lets it go. It’s not like she wants it to fray.

“Is it my turn to give advice?” Blaine asks. He repeats her own words back to her. “Give it time.”

***

Books splay across the coffee table in the Hummel apartment. They make a semi-circle around Jackie. There’s an anthology of short stories that looks at least a couple decades old, several children’s books, and then a series of non-fiction guides.

“I wanted resources,” Jackie says in response to Kurt’s look. “I got a children’s book about gay penguins.” She holds up the book to show off the cover. _And Tango Makes Three_. “It’s a little young. It’s not like gay penguins are news to me. Cute, though.”

Jackie pats at the couch until Kurt sits by her side and stretches her feet over her father’s lap. She angles the book so he can see the pictures too. “There weren’t a lot of options on kids with gay parents at Lima’s library, but I made some requests through interlibrary loan.”

Kurt reads over her shoulder. It’s not exactly their circumstance – there isn’t nearly enough interpersonal drama with the other penguins in the exhibit for it to ring true, and there’s no penguin divorce that precedes it all – but the pictures are cute. His own baby is approaching adulthood and he wouldn’t have it any other way, but gay penguins hatching an egg together is a sweet thought.

Kurt touches one of the penguin illustrations. “May I borrow this before you return it?”

“Are you going to share it with Blaine?” Jackie asks. It’s encouraging, not accusatory.

“He’ll think it’s sweet.” Kurt can imagine the cooing noise Blaine will make already.

“Is Blaine okay?” Jackie asks.

“He’s fine.”

“Something sounded wrong on the phone,” she presses.

How much should he share about the intimacies of their conversations? But she asked. She clearly listened in when Kurt retreated to somewhere semi-private to speak to Blaine in low, soothing tones, which he can’t bring himself to scold her for since he would have done the same. And it’s not like Blaine is an intensely private person who has qualms about letting others know how he feels. He’s an open book.

“Everyone is adjusting, even those of us who knew it was coming.” Of course it’s hard. Or course the choice he made is always on his mind. It was always on his mind before, too, and hard then as well, just secretly so. Some days are clichéd and harder than others. It’s not a singular event that wears them out – it’s a feeling built over time.

“That’s why I went to the library. To help. Although, like I said, their on-hand supply is limited. I was hoping for something like, _The Care and Keeping of You Newly Gay Dad_.”

“Not so new,” Kurt reminds her ruefully. Just new to everyone else’s awareness but hers.

“No, I know, but it needs to be pithy to be a book title.”

“Thankfully I don’t need to be cared for and kept.”

Jackie tsks at him. “I know you’re as fully functional as adults get, but _honestly_ , Dad. Independence is a myth. Everyone does better with someone else looking out for them. We’re on each other’s list of someones.”

“I’m supposed to take care of you,” Kurt corrects.

“Too bad. I’ve got a checklist going for us to work on for you.” Jackie unearths a notepad from the pile of books, methodical as always. “One: actually see the guy that you’re engaged to, since he’s presumably at least part of why you’re doing this.”

“He has kids to take care of too.” Kurt wishes he could see Blaine more, but he can’t be Blaine’s priority right now. Lounging around gazing adoringly at each other comes after letting the dust settle, along with planning for a wedding and a life together. They manage a few moments, even if they’re briefer than either would like.

“Are they collectively under house arrest?” At Kurt’s look, she says, “What? If you told me they were, I’d believe you, no judgment. No one has that much enthusiasm without a little accidental arson. Are _you_ under house arrest?”

Kurt holds off on making more excuses about waiting and appropriate timing and let everyone adjust in theory before having to spend too much time with reality. He gestures for her to continue.

“Two: there are PFFLAG meetings in Columbus, but since you don’t want me driving that far alone, you’re coming too. The next meeting is in two weeks. I’m going to put it on your calendar. Three: have you called Grandpa recently?”

For the second time, Jackie calls him out on a riff he pretends isn’t there. Kurt has excuses for that as well. His relationship with his father is so much less than it could be. But Kurt won’t beg to be loved. He’s not budging.

Jackie scoots closer and lays her head on his shoulder like she used to. “We’ll work on it. Don’t worry. It’s on my list now.”

***

Jackie texts: _I’m going to call in a bit it doesn’t have to be right now if you’re busy. <3 _

Rather than wait, Mercedes sets down the notepad for songwriting that is still stubbornly empty and calls her.

“It’s nothing dire I swear!” Jackie says when she picks up, well versed in the important words to say when calling unexpectedly while Mercedes is away. “Can you put Tina on? Is she there? I want to get ahold of Winnie and Wesley and – well, is Wendi old enough to have a phone? Or an email? I didn’t think to ask before.”

“Tina’s not usually far. I’ll check for you.” Mercedes rises. Locking herself in her hotel room has not been any more conducive to songwriting than all the other settings she’s tried. She heads down the hall toward Brittany and Mike’s hotel room, where Tina can be found most times Mercedes goes looking. Late at night, when they’re all tired and wired at the same time, it’s common to collapse in the same space.

“Thanks,” Jackie says. “My two options were to ask Dad to ask Blaine to ask them, or to ask you to ask Tina to ask them, and either way it’s a game of telephone to get _to_ a telephone number. I’ll take an excuse to call you when it presents itself.”

“You don’t need an excuse,” Mercedes says firmly, not for the first time. “Vocal rest doesn’t apply to you.” She adores her kid, and she doesn’t get enough of her. A summer tour and a highly reputable private school outside of Lima the rest of the year don’t give them a lot of time.

Upon reaching the correct hotel room door, Mercedes knocks louder and waits longer than she normally would. The mutual infatuation between Tina and Mike is easy to see, and she’s not interested in seeing too much.

“Tina, can you come say hi?”

Mercedes loiters, wondering if she’s jealous of something Tina doesn’t even have yet. Carefully _not_ listening in case she’s misjudged how quickly things are progressing, because her initial assessment is “not very” but she’s been horrifyingly wrong before.

“Give Tina another moment to appear,” Mercedes says into the phone.

“I just… I figured we could understand each other,” Jackie says. “I don’t know if we’d become friends under normal circumstances. That’s just too far from reality, right?” There’s a smile in Jackie’s voice. “Normal circumstances are a moot point. We can try now.”

That sounds similar enough to Mercedes. Would she have become friends with Tina on her own, if Tina hadn’t shown up on her door with baked goods and let herself in?

“I don’t want to miss my chance to connect before school starts,” Jackie continues.

“Send me the date you go. I’ll rush back as soon as we hit the last show and we’ll make sure you and I get some time too.” The downside of planning tours months and months in advance is Mercedes never knows what will be going on in her life until she’s already committed. She couldn’t have predicted this. She knows Jackie is in good care with Kurt, but she needs to see for herself.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“I’ll listen to that complaint about almost everything but school. School you gotta do anyway.”

“School as a concept is fine. I don’t want to go away again. I could go to school here, where everyone else is.”

Mercedes snorts before she stops herself. The backwater school she and Kurt went to decades ago made them both miserable in different ways. They agreed Jackie deserved better. Kurt was the one who found the perfect high school for her: no bullying, no curriculum full of ignorance and bias. One of Kurt’s few requests connected to their divorce was that Mercedes continue to pay for the school a mechanic’s salary couldn’t afford. He wouldn’t fight for the house or anything in it as long as Jackie kept her education.

“Our whole family will be busy _being a family_ and I’ll be nowhere,” Jackie presses. “ _Alone_.”

The threat of loneliness is an easy way to appeal to Mercedes. It was another hallmark of her own youth. When she said she wanted better for Jackie, she included that in her list. It’s the difference between letting Jackie have an adventure versus sending her away. Mercedes thought of school as the former.

“That’s not how I picture the future for us,” Mercedes says. “We’re not going to be alone, no who ends up where. However, if it really matters to you, your dad’s gonna make the call on this one. Petition him.”

“Oh, I will!” Jackie says, suddenly mischievous again. “I’ll even tell him I have your permission.”

At that moment, Tina slips out of the hotel room. “Hey!”

“Am I interrupting?” Mercedes teases.

Heat rises in Tina’s cheeks. She tosses her blue-streaked hair. “You could have come in. You realize Brittany is here too, right?”

“Hey, Jackie, Tina’s here,” Mercedes says into the phone, wrapping her arm around Tina in a sideways hug to make amends for her teasing. “She can help out.”

Mercedes hopes for Jackie the same companionship she now has.


	8. Everyone Tries Their Hardest

In the weeks following the launch of Mercedes’ latest tour, Brittany and Mike pretty much adopt Tina. Mercedes finds Tina with them whenever she goes looking, and she’s once again in their shared room, reclining against a bed of lavish hotel pillows and letting them entertain her. Today, Brittany and Mike improvise a stage along the foot of their beds to impress their audience of one. Both Brittany and Mike still flirt with Tina nonstop, although Brittany also makes Tina sit next to her to show off photos of Santana while bragging about her gorgeous wife.

Mercedes doesn’t count herself as part of their audience. She’s here to work. While Tina studies how Brittany and Mike move in a way she pretends is completely platonic, Mercedes settles by her side with her notebook, an ice pack for her knee aching from tonight’s performance, and her mug of tea in hopes of songwriting out of the post-divorce block.

So far, Mercedes’ attempts at writing have been to pick up her notebook and put it back down just as empty as when she began. She keeps hoping to do better. Soon she'll no longer have being busy with the tour as an excuse for why writing for her next album has stalled. Writing while alone hasn’t worked, so now she tries writing with company. Maybe she can glean from their sweet flirtations and write a love song that isn’t heartbreaking, or mimic their playful conversation. She’ll borrow Tina’s willingness to try again since Mercedes hasn’t found hers.

“Okay, enough watching – I think it’s your turn to dance.” Brittany extends her hands to Tina, ready to pull her up on their imaginary stage.

Tina pulls out of her grasp with a laugh. “I’m not a professional.”

“I thought you said you teach dance?” Mike asks.

“At a gym. Along with jazzercise and zoomba and other dance-fitness hybrids to make working out sound fun and make the arts pay. It’s as close as anyone gets to a full-time performing career in my small town. Mercedes is the fluke.” Tina smiles proudly at her. ~~~~

“So it’s your job. That makes you a professional.” Mike extends a hand as well.

“Which means you have no excuse,” Brittany adds. “Get up here!”

“It’s not the same. You’re all amazing at what you do. I’m your token normal person along for the ride,” Tina says.

Mercedes wrinkles her nose in disagreement.

“Mercedes would like to make a joke about that,” Brittany announces. They take turns interpreting for her while she’s on vocal rest. Thanks to their unorthodox help, Mercedes is getting better at enjoying their company without wearing out her voice more than she already does performing. “Something overly sincere about valuing you as a person is likely to follow.”

Tina’s protests don’t stop her from taking both hands offered and clambering to her feet before Brittany even finishes speaking. With a toss of her blue-streaked hair, Tina joins in. She looks to Brittany or Mike on either side to figure out what they’re doing or makes it up.

Mercedes’ pen touches paper. Instead of leaving another lonely ink splotch on the page, she starts to scrawl. Mercedes is not about to do something a clichéd as claim a muse, but Tina inspires her. It’s the un-intimidated, can-do attitude that has her grooving alongside trained professional that speaks to Mercedes. It’s why she likes having Tina around, besides just the comfort of someone dealing with the exact same major life change. Tina doesn’t hold back. It convinces Mercedes they’re both going to be okay.

There should be more songs for friends, Mercedes decides.

Mike is the first to catch on with a nudge to Tina’s side and a nod in Mercedes’ direction. Mercedes pretends they’re not more obvious than they think. Mercedes writes while they play around.

“See! You could dance in the show!” Brittany cheers, as oblivious as Mercedes pretends to be.

“Mercedes has done me enough favors. Letting me embarrass myself publically helps neither of us. She’s is already the kindest person we collectively know. Let’s not push it.”

Mercedes wrinkles her nose again and hopes Tina interprets it correctly.

“We’ll pick a city that doesn’t matter, like Omaha,” Brittany suggests.

“How long are you sticking around?” Mike asks Tina. He’s openly hopeful.

“Are you flirting or is that a real question?”

“Both is good.” Brittany’s tone is dreamy rather than salacious.

“We know you think both is good, Britt.” Mike laughs.

“Knowing when I’m leaving means knowing where I’m going next,” Tina says, repeating the dilemma she once confessed privately to Mercedes. “I don’t – I don’t feel the same way about home anymore. Not that I could never not go back! I know I have to. But I can’t picture it the same way anymore. I can’t imagine being in my house I used to love and feeling like it’s anything other than wrong now.”

“You don’t have to go. You’re seeing the world. You could go anywhere in it.” Mike sounds a second away from offering she follow him home. He bites his lip.

Tina shakes her head. “Picking out a new home isn’t what this trip is for. Flouncing off for a couple weeks isn’t the same as flouncing off forever.”

“There’s a lot of space between the two, though,” Brittany says. “Like a medium-lengthed flounce.”

“I’ll figure it out. I know I can’t stay here indefinitely. As mentioned, Mercedes is already unbelievably patient.”

Mercedes smiles back at her. It’s Tina’s choice, of course, right up until they have no time left on this trip. Mercedes hopes it’s long enough to write Tina a song. ~~~~

***

Each time Blaine prepares for the tap dance class he took over for Tina, he half-expects Kurt to show up like he threatened, ready to look ridiculous if it’s an excuse to be close by. The image in enough to conjure the winning smile needed for performing with his class.

Instead, Kurt’s daughter is the one slipping in right when it’s about to start, tugging tap shoes on while getting into place. She doesn’t seem bothered by joining in on an unfamiliar class whose regulars have been working on the routine for weeks now. She fakes it with a smile when she can’t figure it out.

Blaine smiles warmly when she lingers after class is dismissed. “Hi, Jacqueline.”

“Just Jackie is fine – I’m saving Jacqueline for a stage name,” she says with complete seriousness. “Jackie Hummel will be personal and Jacqueline Jones will be a star. That’s at the tail-end of my five year plan, so you have approximately four years before you have to start practicing it.”

Years of living with teenagers have Blaine used to not cracking a smile at their overdramatic pronouncements. “Did Kurt tell you about this class?”

Jackie drops the serious look for a teasing one Blaine is all too familiar with seeing from Kurt. “The internet did, because you have _a website_ , which I looked up in phase three of internet-stalking you to make sure you checked out.”

“We had this whole joke about… Anyway, I’m glad you came. I know it’s hard figuring out the routine in the first class. You did great.”

Blaine means to show restraint and wrap up the conversation there. Trying too hard to win Kurt’s kid over won’t improve his standing with his own. He’ll feel terrible for even making a comparison. He turns to pack up. He’ll go home and keep hoping at least one kid will want to spend some time with him tonight as proof they won’t want him out of their lives as soon as Tina returns.

“Do you want to meet my grandpa?” Jackie asks.

“Sure. Absolutely.” Blaine nods, restraint gone. “Which one?”

Jackie gives him a look in response.

“Right. The one that makes sense for me to meet. Although whoever in your family you want…” Blaine trails off before he comes on too overeager: his perpetual curse. He covers by smiling more.

“Let’s start with him.”

The garage door on Kurt’s childhood home is open as Blaine and Jackie pull up alongside the curb. The house is in a modest, older neighborhood. A walker rests off to the side of the car. A man who must be Kurt’s father leans over the exposed engine. The image reminds Blaine so clearly of Kurt. The resemblance is there even given Kurt’s delicate features and upturned nose he must have gotten from his mother.

Sitting here, seeing Kurt’s father, brings into focus how unprepared Blaine is to leave the station wagon. He turns to Jackie. “I never got the full story from Kurt on things with his dad. He didn’t want to talk about it. Is there anything I should know?”

“Nah, that’s enough.”

“So the plan is….?”

“For you two to meet. Ta da.” Jackie is up and out of the car before Blaine can ask any more questions. Blaine follows at a slower, more cautious pace.

“Hello, sir? Burt Hummel?”

Burt rises slowly. He takes them both in. “Is there some kind of trouble?”

“Gramps, this is Dad’s fiancé, Blaine.”

No one has called Blaine Kurt’s fiancé except Kurt. Despite popping the question in front of all the lunchtime clientele at a Quiznos, their engagement has been a largely private celebration. This is probably not the moment for getting sidetracked by how good it feels for someone else to acknowledge them. Blaine holds it in and focuses on Burt.

“My hands aren’t clean,” Burt says to the one Blaine extends. “Where’s Kurt?”

“Visiting was my idea,” Jackie says. She links her arm with Blaine’s like he extended it for her. “I asked Blaine to come so you could meet him.”

“He assumes I don’t want to see him,” Burt surmises.

“It’s not an assumption based on nothing,” Blaine says. Dealing with his own parents guides his thoughts more than anything Kurt has explicitly said about Burt. The way Kurt sounds when he talks about him, though, and how wistful he got when talking about people coming to their wedding… “When we get married, we want our friends and family there with us.”

“This is about a party?” Burt sounds ready to laugh at him.

“If you want to pretend that’s all that marriage is about.” Blaine’s nose scrunches with distaste. Spare his from straight people who act like marriage is a burden but still don’t want to share. He and Kurt came out and yes, are planning a wedding in their pursuit of happiness. Anything less sounds trivial. “I think we both know better. Kurt wants you there. He wants you in his life. It’d mean a lot if you’d reach out to him.”

Burt looks unimpressed, but he also seems like the kind of man who has that look more often than not. Blaine wonders what kind of man Burt sees looking at him. Is he friendly or does he smile too much? Is he confident or a showboater putting on an act that can be seen right through? Considerate or meddling?

“Let me guess – you don’t have kids but make a hobby of offering parenting advice.”

“I have three, actually, although the other thing is true enough. We’d like it if you’d like to meet them one day too.”

“Here’s my unsolicited advice since we’re taking turns here: you focus on the three of them and get back to me in 25 years on how well you did.”

Perhaps Blaine is about to embarrass himself in front of Jackie, or continue to embarrass himself, but that’s better than doing nothing. The presumed correlation between dignity and silence is overrated. Blaine doesn’t shut up like Burt’s comment so clearly directed him to. “I know my kids aren’t having the easiest time. I’m asking them to adapt quickly and let me change the way their lives have always been for the sake of my own happiness. They’re children. I’m supposed to like them even when they’re difficult. What’s your excuse?”

The quickest way to frustrate Blaine is by not liking him when he’s trying so hard to be universally likeable. And he’s trying not just for his sake but Kurt’s too. He deflates as soon the pent up frustration leaves his system. He’s probably looking for approval in the wrong place again. He’s convinced himself yet again that everything will be fine with the right encouraging words.

“Yeah, I’ll see myself out.” Blaine shoves the hand Burt never took back into his pocket. “Jackie, if you want to stay, I’m sure your grandfather will drive you home.”

Jackie catches up before he even turns his car back on. Blaine unlocks the passenger side door for her without picking his head up from where he’s rested it against the steering wheel.

“I think he was afraid of meeting you. Now he won’t be,” Jackie says simply. Like she won, instead of whatever that was.

***

At Jackie’s urging, Kurt has the list of goals for his brand new future taped to the fridge in his apartment. He reviews it while he waits for Blaine to arrive.

_\- See Blaine more often_

_\- Convince his kids to not hate me_ (Jackie crossed that out and replaced it with the more optimistic _Reach out to the Cohen-Changs – all you can control is you!_ )

_\- Make friends_

_\- Meet Blaine’s friends? The point about making my own stands_

_\- Call Dad_

Seeing Blaine more is Kurt’s favorite item on the list, so Kurt coaxes Blaine into stopping by on his way home from the gym under to pretense of needing help setting up shelving around the apartment. He can recognize on his own he doesn’t get enough time with Blaine. Blaine needs a break from fretting in the general direction of his children about his future role in their lives. Kurt needs to feel less like he and Jackie are in their own little world that no one else is a part of.

Blaine goes for a tight hug instead of a kiss when he arrives. He hides half his face in the curve of Kurt’s neck. Kurt drops a kiss to his temple instead.

“Hi, sweetie.” Kurt still fights back against telling Blaine that he misses him. It’s not helpful to focus on that fact when they’re not ready to change it. He hugs Blaine tight instead. “I’m so glad you’re here. Jackie keeps saying she’s excited to see you. She should be here soon, if the library lets her out from under its thrall at a reasonable hour today.”

Blaine clings instead of letting the hug end. His chin tucks into Kurt’s shoulder.

Kurt rubs Blaine’s back until Blaine is willing to pull away and wishes the cloud of sadness around Blaine weren’t so expected. The reality of their forever-changed lives hangs over them both. Coming out hasn’t been a mild bump in the road before life returns to normal; they have an entire new normal, with good and bad pieces to it.

“Do you want to talk about it or be distracted?” Kurt would personally prefer the latter.

“I possibly did something foolish,” Blaine confesses. He looks Kurt in the eye as he says it.

Kurt’s heart rate picks up. But “foolish” doesn’t sound as bad as it could. “Okay.”

“Jackie and I went to see your dad the other day.”

“That’s news to me.” Kurt bites his lip to keep from pursing them. Jackie said nothing on the topic despite the time they’ve spent together. “I really should have expected this from both of my favorite meddlers.”

“Don’t be mad at Jackie. She just wants to look out for you.”

“As opposed to your motivation?”

“It’s the same, but it seems more manipulative to invalidate your feelings about me, and I can’t very well let either of us blame a well-meaning teenager for something I wholeheartedly agreed to. We _both_ meant well. I’m sorry for involving myself without even cluing you in. The moment got away from me.”

“And you wanted to make Jackie like you,” Kurt observes.

Blaine’s nose wrinkle expresses his self-deprecation and optimism about that. “Did it work?”

Kurt realizes he isn’t even mad, at either of them. A pang of sadness rises instead. Blaine wouldn’t be apologizing if the encounter went well. Blaine and Jackie meaning well didn’t mend the rift Kurt has been pretending doesn’t exist with his dad. It’s up to Kurt to do that part.

At least he has Blaine and Jackie. That should be enough. “Thank you for trying.”

Blaine leans in to give the kiss he missed upon arrival. It’s sweet and comforting. Kurt closes his eyes. He has Blaine. Jackie will be home soon. He’s lucky enough to have them both. His dad will have to come later.

“I’m going to take a moment and then we’re both going to drop-kick our storm little rainclouds and have a good evening, okay?” Kurt doesn’t sound convincing with the sudden tightness in his voice. He tries again. “We can only control ourselves, right? How we react, how we handle things. So I’m going to be fine. And you are too.”

Blaine nods along, also looking like he’s trying to convince himself. “We took so long to get to this point. I know. And I know anymore time feels wasted, but if our families need it, then…All we can focus on is moving forward. Even if it feels like only an inch at a time.” Blaine grimaces. “I’m having a hard time selling myself on my own pep talks. Was I ever believable to other people? Maybe don’t answer that. I think it’s just hitting me that this is forever.”

Kurt takes Blaine’s hand. “ _This_ is forever too.”

“And it’s not like I want to be straight. Not really.” Blaine’s gaze falls on their wall of photographed LGBT couples spanning nations and decades that he adores so. “Just the convenience of it. The knowing myself sooner, maybe. The whole immediate social acceptance thing.”

“That silly thing,” Kurt says lightly.

“ _So silly_ ,” Blaine agrees, trying to match Kurt’s tone. “So. I thought you wanted me around to help out around the apartment.”

“With those hard to reach shelves?” Kurt holds Blaine’s gaze with a soft smirk as he stretches to the tip of his toes to exaggerate his height advantage.

Blaine’s lips part as he belatedly realizes Kurt’s invitation was an excuse for them to spend time together. “I… Hey, I’ve had to earn the respect of enough beginners’ ballet classes to know how to go on pointe.” He closes the distance as he moves to the tip of his toes too.

Kurt drops a kiss on Blaine’s nose. “You can get things off tall shelves for other people. That’s not what I need you for.”

“Wesley just passed me up. Just barely, but he’s been so thrilled to be the tallest one in our family that his sisters spent an afternoon calling him back an forth to retrieve high things for them.”

“Cute.”

“I think the giggling gave it away but he humored them anyway. He’s good at that. He comes running everytime I reach for something to see if he can reach it first, so I’m guilty of overusing it too.”

“Maybe he’s humoring you too and _you_ haven’t caught on.”

That makes Blaine smile. “Maybe.”

Steps thud outside. Kurt suspects the neighbors have visitors coming over for a party. There’s a level of commotion Kurt usually associates with Blaine’s kids, and then there they are, with Kurt’s own kid thrown into the mix as well. Burt Hummel inexplicably brings up the rear.

“Oh, good, you’re decent,” Burt says. “Hope you don’t mind we invited ourselves.”

Kurt gawks. More people fill the apartment than he’s ever had. He’s used to Jackie being around, and Blaine’s kids seem at home wherever they find themselves, but he hasn’t spoken to his dad since a courtesy “I’m divorcing my wife because I’m gay” call that Kurt ended in a huff when his choice to do so was questioned.

Winnie pushes a Tupperware container into Blaine’s arms. “Can you preheat the oven? We were going to bake these at home –”

Wesley finishes, “– but the warm cookie smell is supposed to make a house smell like home.” He sneaks a glance in Kurt’s direction.

“Correction: time management is not these two’s strong suite,” Jackie huffs.

“Why am I always left out?” Wendi asks.

“I’m sure there’s time for you to be terrible at it too,” Jackie reassures. “You’re young and all that.”

“What’s this?” Blaine asks, looking from his children to the Tupperware in his arms. Hope returns to his eyes and shines bright.

“We’re throwing you a housewarming! Telling you beforehand seemed too conventional.” Winnie gives a showwoman smile.

“Really we’re nosy and want to see the place,” Wendi says.

“Really we literally just planned it.”

Wesley shushes Jackie. “Can we get a tour? Please?”

The kids lead the way down the hall, peeking into open doors. They’re an excitable crew, and they make a good audience. Jackie joins in like she’s part of the mini-gang even though this is her part-time home now. Kurt suspects she’s been playing ringleader getting the rest to come over. Blaine jogs after them and happily narrates as their guide.

Kurt holds back in search of a cookie sheet and a scoop for the dough in the kitchen Blaine unpacked for him. He guesses at the temperature to set the oven to. Kurt can hear the tour even when they leave the room – it’s not a big enough place to lose anyone in.

Burt moves more slowly now. There’s plenty of warning as he shuffles over. “Nice place, kid.”

Kurt laughs because it’s not – it’s a starter apartment for someone who should be too old to start over.

“Nice enough,” Burt amends.

Kurt busies himself prepping the cookies because otherwise his hands don’t know what to do, and his isn’t going to let them shake. Their relationship hasn’t been the best it could be. Burt tops the list of people Kurt hasn’t let get too close for fear of what they might see. And then it seemed too late. The distance was there.

“Blaine seems nice enough too.”

Kurt drops the cookie dough and invites himself into a hug. Burt catches on soon enough. He hugs back with the force of all the ones they’ve missed.

“Look, I don’t remember what I said before,” Burt says with his arms still around Kurt. “I assume you do. Whatever it was, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from you for months.”

That Kurt wasn’t thinking of his family. That’s what Burt said. And the Kurt proved him partially right by ending the call and ignoring him since.

“I’ve been busy.” Kurt didn’t mean to let so much time pass before trying again.

“Bullcrap.” Before Kurt can protest, Burt adds, “I wanna be around. Whatever your life ends up looking like, I’m in it. I’ll make us a priority if you will.”

Kurt swallows. “Deal.”

The noise level returns as the apartment tour loops back around. Blaine leads the kids on to their wall of happy LGBT couples throughout history. He starts explaining the time and place of each with fondness.

Wendi goes right up to the blank canvas. “You missed a spot.”

Kurt and Blaine exchange a look. It’s the placeholder for their eventual wedding photo. “We’re working on it,” Kurt says. The sadness around a wedding he presumed no one would attend abates for now. With enough time and work, maybe his dream for the future can come true. It seems more possible than it did just 10 minutes before.

Soon the smell of fresh baked cookies fills the air. The kids hover impatiently around the oven. Jackie ends up hanging by her dad’s side with a self-satisfied smile. “Wow, it’s so noisy in here.”

“And you’re going to pretend you had nothing to do with this? If you had asked, I would have warned you that Blaine’s terrible about keeping secrets. He would have told me about you being in contact with the Cohen-Chang kids too if he knew.”

“Who, me? Invite all this noise in for the sake of a checklist on the refrigerator? Possibly for forever given the whole wedding that _should_ be impending but you have to get around to actually planning it?”

Kurt wraps an arm around Jackie in a sideways hug she leans into. “Thank you.”

“Did I ever claim to want siblings?” Jackie asks.

“Not that I recall. You always seemed more like an independent kid than a lonely one.” Kurt imagines it’s a vastly different experience watching the Cohen-Changs tease and laugh with a closeness few other people have.

“I’m going to try it out. The Cohen-Changs are down too. I think the idea of gaining something when losing something else helps? Like, not everything that’s changing is a downside. Maybe it’ll be a kind of fun I didn’t know I wanted. Winnie offered to teach me guitar.” Jackie glances up with a calculated follow up of, “I’ve decided I’ll try them out as classmates first, though, before we’re officially family.”

Kurt shakes his head. “You’ll resent me within two weeks.”

“At least I’ll be around for you to _see_ my resentment.” Jackie pauses to compose herself for a more compelling argument. “You told me there’d be a place for me. Here, or wherever you end up. That’s where I want to be.”

Kurt responds with silence for now. He isn’t in the mood to say no. He takes in the picture of his father in quiet conversation with one of Blaine’s kids while the other two goof around with the other two until he has the biggest grin, and Kurt holds onto Jackie.

***

The end of the concert is Tina’s favorite part. It comes out wrong the first time she tries to explain it. It’s not the show being _over_ that she likes; it’s the weird moments of transition that the end brings about. She’s completely transfixed, and then suddenly it’s over. The lights go up. The roar of the crowd dulls. The packed concert hall empties. It’s fascinating to watch every night it happens.

And then there’s Mercedes. Tina watching her transform from untouchable star one moment, to vulnerable friend with aches and pains the next. Between how fastidiously she cares for her knees and her voice, Mercedes saves it all for public appearances so no one sees the strain.

Tina has an ice pack at the ready and a pocket full of tea bags.

Mercedes pats at the sweat collecting on her brow from under the hot spotlights. She holds out her hand for the phone Tina safekeeps for her. “What did I miss?”

“Look at this!” Tina angles her phone to show off the picture of their families gathered together into one crowded selfie. She can pick out each of their kids’ cheerful faces. “Looks like Kurt had a housewarming.”

“Ah. Cute.” Mercedes holds the picture closer. “Or not. Which emotional direction are we going in? I need to know to provide proper support.”

“Our kids are in it, so of course it’s fucking cute.”

“True.”

“The rest, well, I’d rather them be happy than not.” Tina plays with the friendship bracelet on her wrist. It’s getting more and more worn on the road. She should ask Blaine to send another. She should go home and have it replaced in person.

Mercedes studies the photo. “Do you think Blaine will move in?”

“With Kurt?” Tina finds herself clarifying. As if he would move anywhere else. If he moves, it will be into Kurt’s apartment. _If_ is the big question.

Mercedes lightly presses, “Does seeing him there make the choice easier?”

“I still don’t know. I kind of have to know, don’t I? I can’t just keep not knowing forever. Keeping the house for myself is the sensible choice. I’m waiting until the sensible choice is the one I want to make. It’s taking a while. Eventually reason and emotion are bound to hook back up like old flames at a mutual friend’s wedding.”

Mercedes doesn’t resist joking, “Maybe they’re getting a divorce too.”

“Ooh, I know which one gets primary custody of me, then,” Tina laughs. She’s so grateful for having someone with whom she can laugh through all the absurdities of a mid-life reconfiguration of themselves. “They say if your partner dies, you’re supposed to live in the house a while before moving on.”

“We’re back to the funeral thing?”

“I don’t remember if the rule is meant to apply to divorce too. Maybe? Like maybe I’m supposed to just sit and be sad to get it out of my system.”

“Didn’t work for me.”

“You’ve been all over the country. You’re running a music empire. No one will accuse you of doing nothing.”

“Still. Not exactly moving on. I’m sitting and being sad every other waking moment, and what have I gotten out of it? Not even a good song.”

“Which would of course justify it.”

“Of course.” Mercedes grows serious after a beat. “Keep staying with me? I’ve got this big house I don’t want to be alone in. There’s space for you. Hell, there’s space for your kids when they want.”

Tina gawks at her.

“Think about it.”

Tina hugs Mercedes tight. The first words that want to come out are “I love you.” There should be more expressions of love in friendship, she decides. “I don’t have to think hard.”


	9. The Return

“Are you ready to go?” Tina asks as Mike walks her to her hotel room despite being only two doors down.

“Me? Yeah. It’s like muscle memory now.” He mimes packing without looking.

“Does it bum you out each time?” Nostalgia is a silly feeling given they’ve roamed the country and she’s packed the same bag for each new location. The only difference now is she’s going home. She’ll miss this time, but it’s not over yet.

“Working in the arts means everything is temporary. But of course. Every single time.”

“So you’re just constantly bummed.” Tina surmises.

“About some things more than others.”

Mike waits at her door like he’s hoping this isn’t the end, so she invites him in. There’s little for Tina to pack since she never bothers to unpack as they traverse the country. She likes to stay ready to pick up and move on to the next stop at a moment’s notice. It’s no different now that they’ve reached the end. She rearranges her bag to check she has everything.

“Can you come on the next tour too?” Mike asks. He sits on the edge of her bed.

“We’ll see how irresponsible I decide to be,” Tina laughs. “Maybe. Definitely maybe.” It’s tempting to tell herself it’s possible.

“I figured I’d make my pitch while the sentimentality is high.”

“It’s the end-of-theatre-camp feeling. With everyone going their separate ways, there’s all kinds of temptation to make promises about staying friends forever.” Tina isn’t ready to commit to the next forever of any kind, but she wishes she had more time. Especially with Mike. “We can imagine coming back to this every year like it could possibly be the same from one summer to another and this exact moment could be recreated even though that’s never how it goes.”

“It’s comforting.”

“To tell ourselves we’re going to have more opportunities than we do?” Tina’s done deluding herself, thank you very much. She’s all about reality now. “We should’ve made out more.”

“Go on.” The corner of Mike’s lips twitches into a smile at her decisive announcement but he otherwise holds still.

“At the least. We both wanted to, right? I don’t even know why I’m framing that as a question. We both wanted to, _full stop_. I meant to get to it, but then I got too busy being sad or enjoying having Mercedes and Brittany around too, and I never got to it. I should’ve made making out with you a priority. Because I wanted you, and what I want _should_ be a priority, at least in my own life if no one else’s.”

Mike nods like he agrees. “It’s not too late.”

Tina regards him. It’s a nice sentiment if she chooses to believe it. She tests it out by kissing him. It’s as nice as she suspected. It easily transitions from tentative to enthusiastic.

Tina decides she’s not quite tired of hotel rooms yet. She’ll take this moment for what it is and enjoy it. No more, no less.

***

Blaine has spent 18 years being a parent and, despite Wesley learning to say “mama” first, has almost never wasted energy on being jealous of Tina. They’re a team. He wants his kids to think the world of their mom. The kids want to spend time with their mom now that she’s coming back, and that’s great. Sharing is a new reality to contend with. Even amiably. The kids pack upstairs to head over to Mercedes’ (and now Tina’s) for the weekend, and Blaine tries to hold it together downstairs.

This is how it’s going to be. Saying goodbye for a week isn’t the same as them never coming back. Blaine repeats as much to himself.

Blaine is used to loud noises coming from upstairs. The three have taken to hollering through shared walls about what they need to pack. Only the most violent thuds cause him to investigate that no one has come to bodily hard. They’re loud enough to not rule it out.

“Are you having a moment?” Winnie asks when they notice him between the two doorways after he rushes up to check on them. “If so, I’ve got some clothes you can fold. I bet it’ll make you miss me less.”

“Wait, hold up, if we’re putting Dad to work, I want dibs. I’m far easier to miss,” Wesley says.

Blaine takes in the disarray in both rooms. All of Wesley’s possessions are pushed up against one wall. Winnie’s bed and dresser are in the hallway between their rooms. Wendi’s side of the room they share is actually clean. Color drains from Blaine’s face. He thought they agreed to try out sharing time, not leaving him altogether. “… How thoroughly are you packing? Mercedes has beds in her house. You don’t need to take them with you.”

Blaine receives three expressions of _duh_ in unison.

“We’re making space for Jackie, in case we all want to be in the same house at once here too,” Wesley says. “We want to be able to inviter her. This way we can all be at Mom and Mercedes’, or here, or I guess at Kurt’s if we really squeeze tight and don’t have qualms about the floor, but we all know he’s going to end up here eventually; you’re just pretending otherwise for the sake of our conflicted post-divorce feelings. Anyway, we cleared a shelf since she has a lot of books. We figured we’d put her in with Wendi and move Winnie in here with me since we don’t know how Jackie feels about sharing with a boy or a guitar-playing douche.” He affectionately loops an arm over Winnie’s shoulders.

Blaine is so grateful Kurt and Mercedes raised such a cool kid. He and Tina clearly didn’t do so bad either. As much as they’ve struggled to adjust, being kind to Jackie has never been a question.

“Who bet Dad would cry within 30 seconds?” Winnie holds out her hand palm up, knowing full well the answer.

Wesley sighs. “You couldn’t have held out a little longer, Dad?” He hands Winnie a dollar.

Blaine swipes at his eyes. He cries too easily to be embarrassed that they took bets.

“Can I paint?” Wendi asks. “It’s only right we make her feel welcome.”

“With your favorite color,” Winnie snorts.

“It’s cheerful! People love orange.”

“It’s in the top six colors of the rainbow, for sure,” Wesley deadpans.

Wendi trains her attention on Blaine. “A little change could be good for us all, right, Dad?”

Winnie whistles. “Cheap ploy, but I admire it. Wesley and I want to paint too, then! For positive change!”

“Maybe when you come back?” Blaine offers.

“Cheap ploys all around. Respect. We learned them from somewhere, right?” Winnie hugs her dad while she says it, which is how any of Blaine’s kids gets away with as much as they do. “You’re too old to be this insecure, Dad. Of course we’re coming back.”

“I’m not too old for anything!”

“That’s not what you said when I asked you to come to a standing-room-only concert that started at 10:30 PM,” she counters.

“Or to justify falling asleep during the midnight premiere of the seventh Harry Potter movie.”

“Just for a little bit of the camping!” Blaine argues for the millionth time. It doesn’t stop the other two from happily continuing the list for him of things he’s claimed to be too old to do.

“Hey, remember the time Dad once claimed to be too old to cry? While crying?” Wesley produces a tissue box from his nightstand.

It’s never stopped him. Especially not lately. His emotions have been even closer to the surface than usual, ever since the day he knew for certain he was going to rearrange his entire life. Panic, loneliness, gratitude, regret, joy. He oscillates quickly from one to another or feels them all at once. Change is like that.

“I’m not unhappy,” Blaine says to reassure them. Not anymore.

***

Kurt finds the wedding binder where he tucked it in an unused crawl space at what is now Mercedes’ house. It’s heavier than he remembers. Incriminating then and now. He blows dust off the cover. It’s not that he forgot it, per se, but he wasn’t ready to have it back and out of hiding. Its nondescript cover opens to pages upon pages of gorgeous wedding inspiration. It doesn’t hurt like it used to. He pages through the glorified collages and notes on things Blaine has mentioned liking in passing. He remembers lonely days looking at tuxes and picturing Blaine in them cutting out scenes from _Better Homes_ and listing songs that make him think of Blaine that are appropriate for a public setting.

At the time, it had seemed like planning for an alternate universe. So fantastical, the opportunity long-missed.

Blaine, his friend Sam, and the kids arrive by the time Kurt returns to the living room with the binder tucked under one arm. They host Mercedes and Tina’s return-party at Mercedes’ house. It feels different for Kurt now that he doesn’t live there. Less limiting. He’s much happier as just a guest who knows the place well.

The kids wait for Mercedes and Tina to arrive, but not patiently. They take turns running outside at the sound of every passing car or craning their necks at the front windows. They have their bags dumped at the door because hanging out is more interesting than settling in. Sam mirrors the kids on their high-energy path.

Blaine’s interest in the binder piques right away. He’s adorably obvious is his craning to check it out, testing if Kurt will volunteer to let him.

“Yes, it’s what you think it is, and yes, you can see it.”

Blaine grabs at it. He doesn’t open it yet but grips it tight. “Am I about to learn more about you? Are there surprises? Should I memorize this and prepare for a million conversations about the merits of carnations and roses?”

“I don’t think I need that.”

“It’s not a hardship. We’re allowed to make this whatever we want it to be.”

Blaine is earnest, of course. No doubt Kurt could fill their afternoon with talk of weddings and continue on for weeks at an end. But Kurt doesn’t need grand plans. He just needs to know it’s going to happen. He’s starting to believe it will. He can picture Blaine standing there. Picturing anyone else they love standing with them is not as impossible as it once seemed.

Blaine holds the binder with reverence. He takes his time on each page. He coos over suits.

“Did you print out Pinterest?” Wendi asks. She peers as well.

“What’s Pinterest?” Kurt looks to Blaine for an explanation.

“Hold the phone. And by that I mean actually give me your phone because we’re signing you up.” Winnie extends her hand.

“Right now?”

“You’re going to love it. Yes.” She continues to make grabby hands for Kurt’s phone until he relents.

“I mean, who doesn’t get a thrill from neatly organizing what they like into visual bookmarks and DIY projects you’re never going to actually do yoursellf?” Wesley asks.

“Yes! Exactly. Show me too.” Jackie pushes her phone into Wesley’s hands.

“We can all send you suggestions on it.” The twinkle in Winnie’s eye says they won’t all be serious. “We’ll make you a wedding board along with the ones for our room redecorating.”

“Ooh, on that note, how do you feel about orange?” Wendi asks Jackie.

“Um, I guess it depends on the context?”

The Cohen-Chang kids launch into an eager presentation to Jackie on why she should live with them regardless of wherever they are at a given point in time, or why at least she should have the accommodations to do so. Kurt has a warning from Blaine to expect this. Jackie gets to hear it for the first time, and a moment’s hesitation is soon replaced by a level of enthusiasm that matches theirs.

“I love it,” Blaine murmurs at a volume meant only for Kurt. He shuts the binder for now. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t get you anything.”

“Oh, no, I’m keeping this. Are you kidding? You made plans for us. Even if we end up doing something completely different, I want to remember that.”

“Making plans and then doing something completely different seems to be our forte,” Kurt admits. Marrying Blaine was a fantasy. This house he used to feel so lonely in was all he expected. These aren’t the circumstances he honestly pictured himself in. Now sometimes Kurt sees himself and is startled by his age, but he doesn’t see a lie. It’s weird and it’s good. ~~~~

“I don’t know if that’s really unique to us, but yeah. We’re definitely on the more noticeable side of being super wrong about where we were going to be at this point in our lives.” Blaine gives the cutest bashful grin.

Kurt sneaks a quick glance at the kids and then gives Blaine a quick kiss. It’s an innocent little half-second and Blaine looks starstruck anyway.

“So. Tina and Mercedes should be here any minute. Are you ready for yet another big transition, and who knows how many after that?” Blaine asks.

“I didn’t used to want her to come home.” Kurt winces at his own words. “I know it’s awful; you don’t have to tell me. I missed her when she was gone, I did, and we were capable of having fun being together. We’re good at gossiping and she’s the best person I know. But didn’t like who I had to be, and I was so bad at it anyway. Reuniting reminded me what an act it was. I didn’t fit with how I saw myself when I was alone.”

“And now?”

The sound of an engine has the kids and Sam running to the door. Kurt squeals Mercedes’ name and hugs her before he has time to weigh how to greet her anymore. She laughs into his shoulder.

“You look amazing, oh my god, I missed you!”

“Let me check the makeover in person. Spin!” Mercedes guides Kurt into a pirouette. She runs her hands through his new haircut.

“Do I look different?” Kurt asks, tongue in cheek.

“Wildly.” Mercedes pinches his cheek where it puffs from his smile.

It’s the way he’s always wanted to feel. Just happy. Just grateful.

***

The cheers that erupt at Mercedes and Tina’s arrival do their best to rival any concert hall on tour. Kurt races for her. One of the Cohen-Chang kids hangs onto Blaine waiting her turn while the other two pounce on Tina. Blaine has a new friendship bracelet at the ready for her.

It’s good to be back home. There’s relief in that realization for Mercedes. She wants to be here. The high energy is just what her home needs to not feel broken. She hasn’t been left and alone. Peace and quiet didn’t work for writing, and maybe this will.

Whatever thrall Sam has over Tina and Blaine’s kids, it seems to apply to Mercedes and Kurt’s kid as well. Jackie waves Mercedes over to join them in conversation.

“I can give you a pre-school year tour. Not, you know, ‘pre-school’ but ‘prior to school at the appropriate grade level’,” Sam offers. “Check out the lockers, cafeteria…”

By Mercedes’ side, Kurt shudders at the thought of both. Mercedes can feel the shake against her side.

“It could be fun. We can make it so you know the whole school before you even show up for your first day, maybe bring the other kids along for color commentary…” Sam’s eyes connect with Mercedes’. “…Bring your parents so they worry a little less.”

“More than a little less, ideally,” Mercedes says. She gives Jackie an affectionate squeeze.

“Ms. Jones, it’s a pleasure.” Sam offers her a hand. “You must hear this all the time, but I just, I just think you’re great.”

“I don’t mind hearing it once more.” In spite of everything – how frequently she meets fans, how unready she is to have a man fawning over her again – she’s charmed.

“I can try to limit myself.” He smiles back. “Actually, once more?”

He waits for her to laugh and say yes.

“I’m, just, wow. I was a disaster after my divorce, and you’re so the opposite of that. The first time we met, you were laughing and making friends?”

“Those things help.” Thank goodness for Tina on both accounts. Mercedes’ memory of Sam from that night they met is hazy. The only attractive men on her mind were at the epicenter of her crumbling marriage. But he showed up for his friends and took care of them when they needed him, and there’s something to be said for that. Sam is divorced too, and if he was a mess over it, maybe he understands at least one aspect of what she’s going through.

“I’m so impressed. And if it’s laughter and friends that you want…” He bows deeply and without a hint of irony. “Sam Evans at your service.”

“Just friends?”

“To start. And end, if that’s all you want. I promise I’m not a douche who says that and whines about the friendzone later. Friends are great.”

“I’ll toast to that.”

Tina hands her a glass of sparkling cider Kurt and Blaine brought along to celebrate their return. Everyone else in what will eventually become a family gathers around, glasses in hand, ready to raise them to the next chapter of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!


End file.
